The game is underway! This year, we have 38 players, up slightly from the 34 we had last year, but the prizes – vastly improved! Last year, Wayne of Reel Whore took home a DVD of his choosing from Amazon as well as a t-shirt. This year, the prize pool is deep, and will shake out as such:

First place:
* From Rachel of Rachel’s Reel Reviews, a $25 gift certificate to a large movie theater chain (one in the area of the winner),

* From Joshua of The Discordic Adventures of Fnord, a set of five DVDs, including A Nightmare on Elm Street (Limited Special), My Super Ex-Girlfriend, Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, and Revolver.

Second Place:
* From me, the standard DVD of your choosing (up to $19.99) from Amazon,

* From Wayne, a set of two DVDs, Transformers and Spider-Man 3. As Wayne stated, “Both of those should be appropriate since they are summer box office breakers.”

Third Place:
* From This Guy of This Guy Over Here, “If I finish my eBook by then, I’ll be happy to throw that in the pool of prizes… value will be $4.99 haha… but that’s a big IF,”

* From me, a brand new t-shirt of insignificant value.

Here’s a list of all of the players in this year’s contest; for kicks, I’ve thrown in their picks for the tournament champion:

Those champ picks break out as such:
Iron Man 2 – 21
Eclipse – 8
Toy Story 3 – 7
Inception – 1
Shrek Forever After – 1

Finally, I posted this earlier, but just in case, so you know that I’m no cheater, here’s my bracket.

Good luck to all, and extra special thanks to all those contributing to the prize pool! Makes it a lot more fun with a larger pool and more winners. Updates to the scoring will be posted periodically over the next few months.

P.S. – Bonus PLUG: If you just can’t get enough bracketology, Orrin of The Sophomore Critic has created a movie-themed bracket tournament of his own about the best films of 2009, which can be found here.

Tags: contests, March to Box Office Madness