Hollywood Fantasy Draft Finale

A year ago, four (Cult)ure writers bravely selected 10 actors to fill out a fantasy Hollywood studio. This year, we've got a winner in place. Well, winners. We're egalitarian like that. First, let's review how we got here.

Roll call

Team Kevin: 1) Cate Blanchett, 2) Brad Pitt, 3) Kate Winslet, 4) Edward Norton, 5) Leonardo DiCaprio, 6) James Franco, 7) Elizabeth Banks, 8) Sean Penn, 9) Maggie Gyllenhaal, 10) Gillian Anderson

Team Steve: 1) Javier Bardem, 2) Daniel Day-Lewis, 3) Benicio Del Toro, 4) Jeff Bridges, 5) Christian Bale, 6) Michelle Williams, 7) Gwyneth Paltrow, 8) George Clooney, 9) Philip Seymour Hoffman, 10) Al Pacino

Team April: 1) Robert Pattinson, 2) Johnny Depp, 3) Robert Downey Jr., 4) Angelina Jolie, 5) Helen Mirren, 6) Taylor Kitsch, 7) Paul Rudd, 8) Mark Strong, 9) Catherine Keener, 10) Simon Pegg

Team Joe: 1) Meryl Streep, 2) Channing Tatum, 3) Rachel McAdams, 4) Ryan Gosling, 5) Joseph Gordon-Levitt, 6) Ben Foster, 7) Kristen Bell, 8) Amanda Seyfried, 9) Gael García Bernal, 10) Jesse Eisenberg

There are a lot of factors and sources to consider in picking a winner, so we limited ourselves to IMDb for the award and box office information and only the most cursory gossip blog serches for the public points.

Methodology

• All feature-length films released between May 1, 2009 and April 23, 2010 were included unless that movie had no box office and no award information (the two big grading criteria)
• 5 points for an acting nomination; 10 points for an acting win (including ensemble and voice work)
• 2.5 for a picture nomination (i.e. appearing in a movie that was nomination for a Best Film/Best Picture award); 5 points for a picture win
• Public points: something positive in the public eye +1 (e.g. organizing Haitian relief telathon), something negative in the public eye -1 (e.g. claiming to be "allergic to vaginas")

Results

N.B. View complete breakdowns (PDF) by clicking on the team name.

Winners

Acting, Picture, and Public Points: Team Steve

Between George Clooney and Jeff Bridges (Steve: "Yes! Jeff Bridges, baby!!!"), Steve managed to rack up an astonishing number of acting and picture awards as well as public points. Of course, when you fill your studio with as many cool cats as Steve did, that's to be expected. I have no idea what kind of voodoo magic Steve worked to pick the two most celebrated actors of the last year, but I'd like to. Though he may not have the dosh of my or Joe's studios, a respectable $663 million makes him the Focus Features of our lot. Not quite what we were expecting from Sausage Studios.

Box Office: Team April

I took a few knocks last year for my first pick in our Hollywood Fantasy Studio Draft: crazy Robert Pattinson. I had but one goal in mind: crass commercialism. I was certain that even if no one else did, Von Pattinson would bring in the big bucks. And you know what? I was right. While I didn't have the foresight to draft Sam Worthington or Zoë Saldana (or both), I still outpaced my nearest box office competitor by more than $750 million. Not bad for someone who drafted Angelina Jolie only to have her not put out a single movie or for my dearth of public points. I'm Summit Entertainment: suddenly flush with cash, I'll greenlight just about anything (which explains Remember Me as much as it does The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus)

Movies: Team Joe

Joe's team is the hardest working one on the lot. They appeared in 23 movies over the last year, four more than his closest competitor and more than three times as many as the lowest score. Team Joe was also a solid second for box office, acting awards, and picture awards, thanks in large part to Meryl Streep (Joe: "I love that I was saved by Meryl Streep!") and no thanks to picking two of G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra's stars. Team Joe is a combination of a major studio and its boutique imprint like 20^th Century Fox and Fox Searchlight.

Loser

Sadly, no one offered any of us the reigns to a studio over the course of the last year, so this experiment ends here. Seriously, though, George Clooney and Jeff Bridges? Steve is a genius.

With additional files from Emily Goodacre.

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Comments (1)

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Emily

April 30, 2010

Votes: +0

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Foresight

Indeed, even though everyone made fun of Steve for picking Jeff Bridges, he was this year's awards darling, but I think April may have had even more foresight in picking Mark Strong. Most people still won't know who he is, but if you clarify "he was the bad guy in everything this year" they'd be like "ohhhhh".

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