Friday, June 13, 2008

Dodgers' Sixth Sense Shows Signs of What's Happening

The Dodgers' 4p game today in Detroit will leave us west coast fans plenty of time to go see a movie tonight, and why not consider "The Happening"? M. Night Shymalan's latest twist-filled motion picture, which opens today against The Hulk Reloaded, was not shown in advance to many critics, leaving pre-movie buzz to be pretty sparse. Which begs the question, how will "The Happening" perform this weekend at the box office?

Well, we at SoSG have pored over the data, to help you plan your weekend festivities. And what is really eerie (though appropriate for Shymalan given his supernatural and otherworldly subject matter) is that certain Dodgers' performances seem to line up pretty closely with the box office performance of Shymalan's last five movies. And what's more, these same statistics all augur quite poorly for the prospects of "The Happening." Quite simply, "The Happening" won't be happening.

Spooky, isn't it?

First, let's check out the box office data. Here, we have the box ofice receipts (from imdb.com) of Shymalan's last five movies: The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs, The Village, and Lady in the Water. We've left a blank for the unknown of this weekend's debut, "The Happening." (click image for larger view)

Next, we take that same data, and index it against the first data point, such that 1999 = 100. (click image for larger view)

Finally, we compare this performance against the key statistics of five past and present Los Angeles Dodgers:

  • Mike Piazza grounded into double plays;
  • Chan Ho Park hit by pitches;
  • Hideo Nomo wins;
  • Jeff Kent strikeouts;
  • Shawn Green RBI.

And the end result isn't pretty: (click image for larger view)

These Dodger predictors, all of which tracked the shape of Shymalan curve fairly closely, indicate that "The Happening" will take in a range of 0% to 22% of the box office receipts of his 1999 movie, "The Sixth Sense." At most, according to the Dodger oracle, M. Night is looking to clear ~$65M in revenues with this flick--floating not much higher than the concrete boots worn by "The Lady in the Water."

Sure, Chan Ho could peg a couple more batters this year (note that these stats don't include hits inflicted by Park's karate kicks), or Kent could go back to his mid-May whiffing ways. But I don't see Piazza, Nomo, or Green upping their numbers any more this season, which is bad news for "The Happening."

"What's Happening," indeed. I'm just curious how Marky Mark is going to do in the role of "Rerun".

4 comments:

Eric Karros said...

Wow nice post and quite a sobering analysis. The numbers don't lie, folks. The numbers don't lie.

Hey HEY hey!

Alex Cora said...

Love the Re-Run picture.

Orel said...

Thank you for picking up the "What's Happening" gag. I hated to think of us not making fun of this movie.

Steve Sax said...

No worries. I figured I only had one weekend to make the gag.