New-ish 'column' at Mendelson's Memos: Box Office Speculation

I stopped doing overt box office guesstimates and speculation a few years back, after I realized A) I was caring more about if I was right than about what the actual numbers meant and B) I didn't want to be part of a growing trend that treated pre-release box office punditry and/or industry tracking like serious news and held the films against the sometimes unrealistic if not intentionally-hyperbolic predictions.  But I miss doing it and box office analysis is what got me started on this site in the first place.  So I'll be publishing my first such piece as soon as this one hits the site.  For the record, all such essays are in fact COMPLETELY speculation.  Yes I'm using math and hopefully using my would-be knowledge and the research available to me to discuss the opening weekends or final grosses of unreleased films with a token amount of credibility, but the films will gross what they will gross.  These pieces are for entertainment purposes only.  I don't want to hear, random example, 'The Avengers opened to $125 million but that's a flop cause Scott Mendelson said it would open to $150 million!'.  Box office speculation in the wrong hands can be a toxic force for evil in the film journalism world, but I shouldn't deny myself the opportunity to write what I enjoy (and what at least some of my readers enjoy) because other bloggers and pundits do it so poorly yet are taken as gospel.  Anyway, once again, these pieces will be clearly marked 'box office speculation' and should be taken as such at all times, regardless of how accurate or hilariously off-base I turn out to be regarding a given film.  So with that said, I hope you enjoy my unofficial return to the world of box office bingo.

Scott Mendelson