Frequently Asked Questions

Studios take turns drafting real upcoming movies onto their slate, in order. The order reverses every round, so whoever picks last in one round picks first in the next, evening out the long wait a normal draft order would give the same studio every single round.

That's the reversal point, not a bug. Whoever picks last in one round picks first in the next, so at that boundary the same studio ends up on the clock twice back to back -- you'll get the same turn chime and highlight both times.

Each pick has a countdown. If it runs out, the league auto-picks for you -- weighted toward bigger-budget movies still in the pool, with enough randomness that it's not always the single biggest one available. The same logic covers a no-show studio's Bench Pick and sabotage turns too.

Each studio also drafts one Bench Pick, right before the sabotage rounds. If a movie on your slate later gets pushed outside this season's window or pulled entirely, you'll get a notification (the bell icon) and can spend your Bench Pick to swap it in -- nothing happens automatically, and there's no rush. If that movie's release date comes back into range before you've spent it, the flag just clears itself and your slate stays as-is.

The final rounds of every draft are sabotage rounds. Instead of drafting for yourself, you sabotage a rival studio by sending a movie you think will flop onto a rival's slate -- a wasteful budget makes for an even better target. You can't sabotage your own slate, and every studio starts each season with maximum 2 sabotage picks.

No -- each studio can only receive as many sabotage flops in a season as there are sabotage rounds, no matter how many rivals still sabotage rounds to draft in. Once a studio hits that cap, everyone else's sabotage picks stop being able to target them for the rest of that season.

Your studio's balance starts at $0. Drafting (or getting sabotaged) commits 2.5x a movie's budget right away, the real industry split with theaters, distributors, and marketing -- showing as a loss until it's released, at which point its own gross starts paying that back, and past it. The main Standings are a career total across every season this league has ever run -- the separate Seasons tab shows one season's own numbers on their own.

No. Seasons overlap on purpose -- a movie you drafted last season keeps earning on its own release schedule (for a good while after it opens) even while this season's draft is already underway, unless it gets flagged invalid first.

The league sits on its final recap until the commissioner schedules the next season. Scheduling resets each studio's roster, sabotage picks, and draft order for a fresh draft -- your career standings and every past pick stay exactly as they were.

A league needs at least 2 studios before the draft can lock in at its scheduled time, and there's no hard cap before then. There's no self-serve leave once you've joined -- before the draft starts, the commissioner can remove a studio to free up the slot, but once drafting begins every roster is locked in for the season.

Not necessarily. Open Leagues (joinable without an invite code, from the Open Leagues page) are bot-filled to one seat short of capacity, so joining drops you straight into a 6-studio league already in motion. The bots draft, use their Bench Pick, and sabotage real studios exactly like a human would -- no special treatment either way.

Yes -- creating an account, starting or joining a league, and drafting is completely free.