Have you ever looked at the marquee at your local movie theater and wondered how certain movies got picked to be shown over others? Are you more likely to catch the latest flick at the multiplex instead of hitting up the big ball game at the stadium? Are you looking for some fun, insightful, and exciting web-based competition in the unusually intriguing world of box office performances?

FlickPicks is a website that features a movie “fantasy football” game in which you create a virtual “theater” each week with a particular amount of “screens” to devote to the newest released films. Let’s take a closer look at how this can not only be educational in terms of how the movie industry makes its millions, but also how you can have a lot of fun while doing it.

Your job in this movie fantasy football game is to pick how many screens each film is worth in order to achieve the most amount of income from your theater’s sales. When you first sign up with a free account, FlickPicks drops you into the first division, the Drive-In Division, where you get your feet wet with other new users just starting out. The playing fields are leveled out this way to keep the high scoring veterans from competing directly with the brand new players.

You then have 7 screens to reserve for each film from the pool of new releases and other titles that are still playing in theaters. While you can choose between applying 1 or 2 screens per film depending on how you think they might perform, you also have the opportunity to gamble points on increasing the screen count for your theater to 3 for a particularly large blockbuster entry (Twilight: New Moon, or Avatar, for instance) and go for the best scores.

For the particularly brave risk-takers, there’s a weekly bonus challenge as well which lets you guess the movies with the lowest per-screen averages from the set of film releases ““ which are not always the easiest to predict!

In addition to the core mechanics of deciding which movies are bound for box office gold, there’s also an impressive amount of social communication surrounding these choices. Each theater is ranked by how well their predictions are made, and are put up on weekly and all-time scoring leaderboards for all to see. You can also form groups of up to 10 of your friends’ theaters together to compete as a team against other theater groups. There are comments for your theater, your group, and a “Buzz” forum where everyone playing can report in on how they might be playing each week.

On top of all the site’s networking features, FlickPicks also is prolific on Twitter, on Facebook, and on its own Tumblr-based blog ““ reporting the latest news on real-life screen counts, contests, and results.

Unlike the Hollywood Stock Exchange (which complicates the fun), and the Cantor Exchange (where real money is involved), FlickPicks is easy to understand, the stakes aren’t so high, and has near zero learning curve to begin playing and enjoying right away. It’s both entertaining and enlightening to see how some movies perform week to week ““ sometimes surprising you with their staying power from past opening weeks, or coming completely out of left field to take a much higher percentage of sales than you might consider when you’re formulating your weekly game plan.

If you’ve ever scoured the web to see how your favorite movies are doing, become addicted to fantasy sports games, or enjoy arguing the merits of art versus commerce with like-minded cinephiles, FlickPicks doesn’t disappoint in its execution and design to make movie fantasy football a wonderfully enjoyable weekly diversion.

If you liked this article on FlickPicks, you might also find these related articles interesting:

• The Awesome Internet Guide to the Movie Addict
• Create Your Own Top Movies of All Time List with Flickchart
• Jinni Recommends You Movies You Should Enjoy
• WhatTheMovie: Addictive Movie Quiz Site

Are you interested in these types of niche games and sites for movies and other entertainment? Sound off in the comments below!

Tagged: entertainment • movie reviews • online games • strategy games