What went wrong - our miserable predictions for 2010

Posted Thursday, December 30, 2010 at 11:48 AM Central
Last updated Thursday, December 30, 2010 at 1:04 PM Central

At the beginning of the new year, everyone becomes an amateur Nostradamus and attempts to prognosticate what the coming year will bring. There's big talk about new and exciting things and bold thoughts about what will come to pass.

Of course, there's a reason that none of us make our living predicting the future and that's because a Magic 8 Ball is more accurate. So, while Nostradamus doesn't need to worry (from the great beyond) about losing his title as best fortune teller ever, it's still fun to pretend we know what we're talking about.

The one thing that most people don't do though is to revisit these bold predictions at the end of the year and hold themselves accountable. It's a good thing that we're not like most people.

So, we figured that the least we can do is to look back at our 2010 predictions and see what we got right (not much) and wrong (almost everything).

First up, Tim and I tackled a new idea in which we made general movie-related predictions for 2010. And to say that we couldn't have been more wrong would be an understatement.

We predicted that Mel Gibson would have a bounce back year and while it started out promising with Edge of Darkness and the critical acclaim his role in The Beaver received, he did even more damage to his reputation via mis-steps in his personal life.

Heck, he was even barred from a cameo in The Hangover II and they let Mike Tyson of all people have one in the first movie.

Tim was a little closer in his predictions. He said that Star Wars would be released on Blu-ray and while it never came to be, we did get the official announcement of it coming in 2011 from George Lucas himself.

However, Tim did miss in his boldest statement when he claimed that the long-rumored new site design for VideoETA would finally come to fruition in 2010. While technically he still has a day and some change to make good on it, I can tell you that he won't make.

Although, I wouldn't dismiss the new site design out-of-hand. Tim cryptically teased our Twitter followers of its imminent arrival. And really, what's a month amongst friends anyhow?

Our next forecasting article attempted to place the top 10 highest grossing movies in order. Now, that's a tall task to be sure. If you need a refresher, you can check out the original news story here or you can simply scroll down. We'll make it easy for you.

Our predicted top 10:

The actual top 10:

So, we didn't do too poorly in correctly identifying half of the list, but the order was way out of whack and I can't believe we underestimated the drawing power of Inception. Things we learned for 2011, more animated movies need to be on the list and throw in a crappy remake or two.

Finally, we get to the real meat of our annual predictions, the part where Tim and I pick our sleeper lists. We like to think that we have a pulse on the film industry (despite Tim's lack of actual movie watching, but we'll go there in another article), so we take great pride in picking out the gems among the garbage out there in multiplexes.

Usually, we've been a bit hit or miss over the years. I think a lot of that has to do with the subjective nature of defining whether a movie is a hit sleeper or not. At the time we did our lists, Despicable Me, How to Train Your Dragon and The Expendables were hardly known, but by the time they were released, they were household names and performed extremely well.

Likewise, several of our movies got pushed back into 2011, but I think it's safe to say that Your Highness and A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas will be breakout hits of the new year.

I would say that both Tim and I did a top-notch job with our sleepers. Almost all of the films surpassed $50 million at the box office with no less than 6 breaking the $100 million barrier. In addition, those films that didn't do as well at the box office are among leading awards candidates, so all in all, I'd say we nailed it this year.

How will we do with our predictions for next year? It's too early to tell, but tune in next week when we reveal our bold prognostications for 2011.

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What went wrong - our miserable predictions for 2010