How about a game?

[bigvalbowski]

We play producer, well I can't, I'm playing Banker.

Every once in a while, I'll post a movie that will be released soon. It's up to you forumers to bid for it. Everyone starts with 20m dollars. And there will be an auction, that lasts for 24 hours, for one movie. When that movie is released, the person who bought the movie will get his money back through the film's box-office success. So if TWTCommish bought "Serendipity" last week for 10 million and it eventually grosses 30 million, he'll have 40 million [20-10=10+30=40] in the bank to bid for "Harry Potter" let's say when it comes out.

Because it's a Thursday, I'll post 3 movies up for auction this week.

First Movie...

BANDITS

MPAA Rating: PG-13 (for some sexual content, language and violence)
Distributor: MGM
Cast: Bruce Willis (Joe), Billy Bob Thornton (Terry), Cate Blanchett (Kate), Antony Burch (Phil), Troy Garity, January Jones, Azura Skye (Cheri), Bobby Slayton
Director: Barry Levinson
Premise: Two bank robbers (Willis, Thornton), known as the "Sleepover Bandits" because they kidnap bank managers the night before a heist, end up fighting over the love of a woman (Blanchett) they sort of/accidentally kidnapped.


Second Movie...

CORKY ROMANO

MPAA Rating: PG-13 (for drug and sex-related humor, and for language)
Distributor: Touchstone Pictures
Cast: Chris Kattan (Corky Romano), Peter Berg, Peter Falk (Pops), Vincent Pastore, Chris Penn, Richard Roundtree, Vinessa Shaw, Dave Sheridan, Fred Ward, Roger Fan, Jennifer Gimenez, Matthew Glave, Martin Klebba (Doublestuff), Rena Mero
Director: Rob Pritts
Premise: Corky Romano (Kattan), the son of a mafia boss (Falk), infiltrates the FBI to see what they have on his father.


Third Movie...

IRON MONKEY

Language: Cantonese Chinese with English subtitles.
MPAA Rating: PG-13 (for martial arts/violence and brief sexuality)
Distributor: Miramax Films

Cast: Rongguang Yu (Dr. Yang, AKA Iron Monkey), Donnie Yen (Wong Kei-Ying), Sze-Man Tsang (Young Wong Fei-Hung), Jean Wang (Orchid), Sai-Kun Yam (Hin Hung the Monk), James Wong (Governor Cheng), Yee Kwan Yan (Hiu Hing), Fai Li (Witch), Shun-Yee Yuen (Master Fox)
Director: Yuen Woo-Ping
Premise: Set in a 19th century China village, when a corrupt politician finds himself repeatedly robbed by a masked bandit, Iron Monkey (Rongguang), named after a local deity, he forces a traveling physician (Yen) into investigating the mystery and stopping him... by holding his young son (Tsang) in jail.


BID AWAY...

[bigvalbowski]

Oops forgot.

Auction closes 10am tomorrow on the Forum's clock.

[spudracer]

I'll take Bandits for 5 Million Alex. LOL..

BTW, this is pretty fun, thanks for starting it.

This is the last time I'm editing this post...I SWEAR

[Yoda]

Will this really work? I mean, do we get the money it makes on the opening weekend only, or the whole time? IE: will our totals be updated with each subsequent day/week/whatever? Anyway, a fellow developer of mine saw this thread and suggested that I turn it into an automated game that members can play on the new site...do you guys like that idea?

Anyway, if the game is going to go forward for now, I'll bid $6 million for "Bandits", and $8 million for "Iron Monkey."

[spudracer]

I don't know if Iron Monkey will get the following Crouching Tiger got when it opened. If it's only gonna be in subtitles, do people have the patience to sit once again and watch a whole movie with subtitles?

But if it does I guess add Iron Monkey to my list at say 5 million.

[spudracer]

Originally posted by TWTCommish
Anyway, a fellow developer of mine saw this thread and suggested that I turn it into an automated game that members can play on the new site...do you guys like that idea?

Should've read the whole thing. YES, please do, this is something that would make gambling a little on the funny side. LOL

[sadesdrk]

This is a great idea...I put up...let's see,TWT was the highest bidder on Bandits,Corky Romano will just outright flop...and Iron Monkey won't get mainstream enough...I'll bid 50,000 over what TWT bid,which was 6 mill.Is that right? Do I own Bandits as of now?

[Yoda]

Ok, I'll see what I can do about the script...either before, during, or after the new launch. I think it has a lot of potential...because, aside from being fun, it's very simple/easy...nothing overly tricky.

Anyway, I'll top the bid of $6.5 million for "Bandits" with a bit of $8 million. :) Anyway, I'm just assuming that you can't have more than your total amount of cash "tied up" in potential bids. IE: if I wanted to raise my bid on "Bandits" to $15 million, I'd have to lower my bid on "Iron Monkey" to $5 million, or lower.

[spudracer]

There needs to be a limit set and I think TWT just did that, so lets set the starting bids at 20 mil, and after that it depends on how well your bids do over the weekend.

[sadesdrk]

Well,I don't know how to play.I want Bandits...I don't want to waste money on the other two...so how do I get it and keep it?

[spudracer]

well you know how much you already spent so take that minus 20 mil, and that tells you how much you have left. However much Bandits makes above what you wagered, TOTAL, not just the weekend, that's how much more money you have on movies coming out for the next week. Or I think. :D

[Yoda]

It's real simple: each movie is up for auction...which means that, unless you actually win the auction, you don't lose the money. Technically I haven't spent a dime, but I have BID $8 million on both "Bandits" and "Iron Monkey." So, I have $4 million left to bid with before I have to reduce one of my bids. :)

[spudracer]

Well throw the 4 on Corky. It will take in at least that, being a comedy.

[Yoda]

I shall bide my time. :) Wanna see what I'm up against.

[bigvalbowski]

Hurry up bidding finishes at 10am forum time.

As to TWT Commish's question, the box office gross I will get from IMDB.com which lists the top 10 box office films. So as long as the film is in the US top 10, then it will be making money for you.

[Yoda]

Hmmm, okay then. This kind of game definitely lends itself to an automated system, though, so I'll seriously look into creating a script to handle these kinds of things: would you object to that, valbowski? Anyway, it's only like 5-6PM forum time, so I've got until tomorrow morning, I assume, right? Plenty of time. :)

[sadesdrk]

Here's my bid...





Spoilerz:just kidding.I just like doing that.






:p-that's my bid.I don't want to play.It's a man's game.:p

[sunfrog]

HEY!! I love this idea!
Mr Showbiz had a similar game but they screwed it all up. People were signing up with multiple accounts and cheating and then they changed the rules in the middle of the game and messed everybody up. It was horrible. But! I do think this is a GREAT idea for a game! There's some problems tho. Only 4 people will get a movie cause there's only 4 movies and there can only be one winner each. What if we bet 20 mil on the movie we want? Then there will be ties. We will have to wait a long time to get our money.

Here is what I suggest. After the Mr Showbiz fiasco I thought about doing a game like this and offering prizes for the top money makers. They had thousands of people playing. Okay here's my ideas. You get 20mil to start, when you bid on a movie, the price goes up. Everyone can buy all the movies, or as many as they can afford. You can sell your movie and take the cash at any time. The entire game lasts, say 6 months. New games start each month so people who missed the beginning won't be sol. If you are poor you can buy a movie at a discount after it has opened.

You CANNOT sell movies to other players. That's how Mr Showbiz messed up. People would make new accounts then sell themselves movies for $1. You CANNOT auction movies to other players. Again, people would auction their movies for 20 mill, create a new account and buy their own movie. No stock market. People can sign up for multiple accounts, buy the same movie to make the price go up, then sell it.No, those things are cheating.

So this is how it would work. TWT buys Bandits for 5mil, the price goes up to 5.5mil (or whatever) The more people buy a movie, the higher the price goes. It pays to buy early. Say, I procrastinate, so I have to buy Bandits for 9 mil.

The movie opens, we sell after it makes us money or whenever we want. OG couldn't afford 9.5 mil so he buys it after opening weekend for 7 mil, he makes money on it from that point on. He doesn't get the money it made before he bought it. He gets the money from the time of purchase.

New movies are released. You can sell your movies to buy the new ones, or if you saved money to buy them you can use that money. Since movies are released at different times this is where stragedy comes into play. Also how you spend your money is stragedy.

Next month Game 2 starts. Everyone who signs up for it begins with 20mil. Money cannot be moved between games. Thmi, joins in game 2. We all begin with 20 mil, buy/sell movies etc. You can play in as many games as you want if you sign up for each one. Game 1 continues. There are two games in progress now.

How to make money. Banner ads on the buy/sell page. Banner ads on the box office totals page. (Box office totals are on this site and updated by TWT or his automated thingy) Movie companies pay for the "about" pages. Like you have a list of movies, Bandits, Corky, Monkey etc.. You click on the link to find out more about the movie, it goes to a Corky Romano profile page that lists actors, director, press release etc, maybe has a trailer. This is paid for by the movie company since it is advertising their movie. If no sponsor, no movie pic or whatever, just the text with basic descriptions.


Copyright Sunfrog 10-11-01. If you make a lot of money, I get some. :)
[Edited by sunfrog on 10-11-2001]

[thmilin]

copyright, hehe.

hey, you know back in the day i was always quoting in development details about movies from hsx.com. that is the all time coolest movie stock game. it isn't auctions and bidding though. but i wuv it. you might check it out but in case you haven't figured me out yet

YES i want a game!!! this is what it's about people.

do you know that if they had a REAL LIFE movie stock exchange our economy would never have downs? and most of us would be millionaires, or at least be in the hundreds of thousands. i'm serious. because americans know their movies. we may not know jack schitt about industry, perishables, tech, etc, but oh yes, we know our movies. tv shows too, but movies are more punch for a solid show rather than something that may begin and disappear after a season. though theoretically you could do it with that, too.

[bigvalbowski]

TWTCommish, I'd love if some site actually ran a game like this properly and for free. I'd have no problem with you using an idea like this. It's a pretty simple idea anyway, anyone can come up with it. A forum like this is perfect for this game because there's only a limited group of people. I don't have the time or the patience to run it with a big group. I'd prefer to play than run the thing.

Sunfrog has some good ideas if it was expanded, but I think as long as it's in this forum, the simpler the better.

Anyway, I'm posting to check the clock. (Is there an easier way to check the forum clock)

As it stands...

Bandits - $8m bid by TWTCommish

Corky Romano - $4m bid by spdrcr

Iron Monkey - $8m bid by TWTCommish


If it's not 10am yet, then you can still beat these bids.

[spudracer]

Wow, I like your explanation a lot more than Sun's. Sun you just confused me a paragraph into your little speech there. LOL

[Yoda]

LOL. I like the ideas that you guys are posting here...and It's obvious that you all really dig the idea of an automated, precise version of this. I'll seriously look into this, and I'll probably even start some of the work on it, to see if it's plausible.

In the meantime, have fun with it in this thread. :)

[sunfrog]

I don't know what time it is either. If it's open i'll outbid TW for Iron Monkey by 1 ml

It's really funny. It's not like CTHD, it's more like the traditional kung-fu movie, with a hero, comic relief, corrupt officials etc.. The fighting is funny at first but has some cool fights later on. It's a fun, funny, kung-fu movie.

You know Thmi, everyone would love a movie stock market in real life! And that might be a good way to raise money to make movies! Like Ryan could describe his movie, people would buy stock and he'd use the money he raised to make the film. Then the profits would pay the investors or they could sell their shares etc... He'd get a few million to make his movie easy.

Some people tried to make a comic book stock market and I think it exists right now. But they did it wrong and so it's clumsy and not right. (They make you mail in your comics to prove you have them.)

[spudracer]

val said that bidding would end at 10 o'clock today, so you're late sun.


Auction closes 10am tomorrow on the Forum's clock.

[bigvalbowski]

So this is how we finished. Sunfrog came in about 3 hours too late.

Bandits - $8m bid by TWTCommish

Corky Romano - $4m bid by spdrcr

Iron Monkey - $8m bid by TWTCommish

Commish has a big advantage with two movies in the bank. You guys should push each other harder. Be more competitive. There was seemingly a lot of interest in this idea but very little of you actually bid, maybe your waiting to see how it works.

The official Box Office Tallies are printed on Tuesday, so I'll post those scores then. Chances are TWTCommish will have a much bigger kitty to bid with than most next week. I'll post next week's films on Wednesday or Thursday. Remember that any players who have never played are free to start next week with a 20m dollar purse.