Welcome to our new home. I hope we'll be worth a bookmark.

The core of the site is based upon the historical box office database we have in place. We believe it to be the most comprehensive movie receipts search engine on the web and the website is built around the features made available by this tool. It was, in fact, Ash who became our Verbal Kint, the man with the plan. He felt he could take Reagen's infamous historical Box-Office Database of Doom and create a search engine. The fruits of his labor may be found by clicking the Box Office Database option under Research Tools on the toolbar to your left. For numbers geeks, what he has up in that section already is enough data for us to get lost in thought for hours. What's even more tantalizing is that we're only scratching the surface. That's right; we don't know everything we can do with this database as of this moment. This means it's important for you, our readers, to chime in with your suggestions and ideas. Some of them won't be possible for various reasons, but we'll give each idea the consideration it merits. If you have suggestion or ideas, just click the feedback link at the bottom of each page and let us know what you'd like to see improved or featured.

With regards to the rest of the site, our goals are simple. In addition to offering you a comprehensive search engine for the last dozen years of movie receipts, we've tried to add features that we know from our own experiences aren't currently offered at other popular box office related Web sites. A perfect example is the Rental Database under Research Tools. Kim Hollis pointed out that none of the other websites currently addresses this important ancillary monetary market for films. She took it upon herself to compile the data from the last few years and Ash has transformed it into another search engine for you, our guests, to use and abuse to your heart's content. Ms. Hollis has opened up a whole new world for forecasters and I invite you to read her column now (if you haven't already done so) for further details.

It's this sort of previously unnoticed trend-watching that we hope to offer our readers on a regular basis. If you bookmark us and keep visiting daily, we cannot guarantee to trigger your mind into exploring new thought processes each visit, but we are confident that we will fire your synapses in new directions at least occasionally. We hope that you will still find us entertaining on visits to BOP the rest of the time so that you will always be glad you clicked over. With this goal in mind, I knew I needed the right group of op-ed columnists.

Many of you who play the Hollywood Stock Exchange, Box Office Challenge and Studio Boss will recognize the writers involved and we are confident that our new readers will come to know and respect them in a similar fashion. Their talents will speak for themselves, so I'll simply tell you who they are and how you might know them.

The Box Office Prophets Staff:

Ash Wakeman, in addition to creating the toys we have at boxofficeprophets.com, is well known for his analytical mind and ability to create intelligent devil's advocate arguments. As a resident of Manchester, England, he will offer insight into the previously-ignored realm of UK box office. This multi-national box-office analysis is unique and we're quite proud to cover different markets in such a manner. Under columnists, click the Ash Wakeman link under Commentary to learn more about the quietest blockbuster of 2001 to date.

John Hamann is historically known to the HSX community as Lloyd Dobler. He plans to offer post-game commentary, if you will, on weekend box office. Updating Sunday with estimated box-office totals and again Monday with actual receipts, John will be one of our busiest and most frequent updaters. Having already been privy to his work, I am confident that this will prove to be one of the most popular portions of the site.

David Parker is historically known to the HSX and Box Office Challenge communities as Iñigo Montoya. A frontline numbers cruncher, he will demonstrate solid forecasting abilities based on data analysis. David is very good at modeling, the art of finding comparison films and using them to extrapolate future performance of similar movies. He will also lend a hand in the Box Office Fallacies portion of the site. In this area, we will deconstruct popular myths of box office behavior using cold, hard facts. We expect this to be the most controversial portion of boxofficeprophets.com and look forward to many debates due to its existence. Under Box Office, click the Box Office Fallacies link to read his first effort, the myth of the R-rated opening.

Cal Hubbard is historically known to HSX players as speaker2animals and has been named by his peers in their most recent awards presentation as the best analyst in the community. His analysis on opening weekend releases is singularly unique in its comprehensiveness. Make sure to check back toward the end of the week to read his work on Planet Of the Apes to experience it yourselves.

Walid Habboub is historically known to HSX players as Duke Fleed. Visitors to our previous site, the-prophets.com, will recognize Walid as our most frequent contributor to the old version of Tickermaster. He has proven to be as good at box office analysis and prognostication as anyone. The only thing more impressive than his skill is his consistent ability for output (rivaling Mr. Hubbard in this regard), and many of the listings you see on the 2001 release schedule demonstrate this. The launch of the site would have been impossible without his dedication. Check out the weekend forecast in the Walid Habboub section under Commentary and read many of his submissions in the Release Schedule section under Research Tools.

Calvin Trager is the owner of the umbrella company, Quo Vadimus, in addition to being the perfecter of the hard disk controller. In addition to DataTech and Lofton Chemicals, he has recently added Continental Corp to the list of multinational conglomerates he owns. As the composite of all infrequently-updating Prophets columnists, Trager will be a major contributor to our new site. This mysterious stranger asks but one question: Where are we going?

Kim Hollis is the Web master of boxofficeprophets.com. In addition to the previously mentioned work in creating the video database, she will do movie reviews, light numbers crunching and all of the daily tasks that are required to make a Web site run smoothly.

As for me, I am the owner of this Web site and the acknowledged fall guy if it doesn't work out. For those of you who come from the HSX community, you're probably familiar with me, and for anyone else, I'd like to prove myself to you rather than talk a good game. so I'll just say that I will be doing weekend analysis, trend-watching and forecasting. I hope you'll find it worth reading.

There are countless others to thank for their contributions in testing and debugging our site and I want to let you know how much I appreciate all of your help. In particular, I want to thank Stephanie Star Smith, our site editor, for going waaaaay beyond the call of duty and proofreading over 90% of the content you can read at boxofficeprophets.com. Thank you, my shining Star. In addition, Kim Hollis has tirelessly and selflessly devoted herself to producing the content you see here, and if you like how it looks, please take a moment to say so to her. As much as anyone involved in the process, BOP exists due to her. Finally, special thanks goes to Petronella, who thoroughly checked every page on the release schedule and Reagen, Ash and Dano, without whom the database at boxofficeprophets.com would not be a reality.

So that's the cast of characters we've assembled for our new Web site and a brief look at what they'll be doing. We're still in the process of getting organized, so keep checking back for new features. These will always be listed in the Updates portion of the main page for easy reference. Ash's graphing tool in particular will blow your mind, but it isn't quite ready yet. Patience, Daniel-san. All good things...