​Avatar's opening weekend & a work-from-home truce​

Welcome to Nonrival, the newsletter where readers make predictions.

How it works

1. On Sundays, read the newsletter and make a forecast by clicking a link at the bottom.
2. On Wednesdays, see what other readers predicted and how your forecast compares.
3. Over time, you’ll get scores based on how accurate your forecasts are.

In this issue

• Avatar 2 forecasts from December scored
• Reviewing forecasts from the Charter/Nonrival future of work partnership

Thanks for forecasting. Send feedback to newsletter@nonrival.pub.

Avatar 2 opening weekend

Last month, Nonrival asked how likely it was that Avatar 2 grossed $200m or more in the US in its opening weekend. That would have made it the second biggest opening weekend since the pandemic.

• The average reader forecast said there was a 41% chance of that happening.
• In fact, it brought in $134m in its US opening weekend, well short of $200m. So lower forecasts score better.
• You didn’t make a forecast or else you’d be seeing your personalized score here

Despite not clearing $200m on opening weekend, the movie is still doing well and seen as evidence that Disney can still make successful blockbusters, per the Financial Times:​

A work-from-home truce is coming in 2023

The last two years have been a tug-of-war over remote work, with CEOs trying to bring workers back to the office and staff mostly preferring to stay home. The staff usually won out. But 2023 will be different: the work-from-home wars will calm this year, leaving remote work much more common than it was in 2019 but nowhere near its 2020 highs.

At least that’s the gist of what Nonrival and Charter readers think.

As a reminder, last year the work-focused publisher Charter asked executives, “Looking ahead 12 months, which of these scenarios seems most likely regarding staff locations?”

Far and away the most common answer was: “Staff will come into an office more days each week than they do now.” Only 25% saw remote work increasing.

Charter and Nonrival partnered at the end of last year to ask readers from both publications for a prediction about how this same survey question would look when it was repeated later this year.

Specifically, we asked: How likely is it that “roughly the same” is the most-selected category when Charter repeats its survey in Q2 2023?

About two-thirds of readers thought it was likely or very likely that “about the same” would be the most popular choice. In other words, most readers think that far fewer executives will expect big changes in remote work this year compared to last year.

This makes sense, since days worked from home in the US has been consistent for about a year now, hovering right around 30% — after shooting from 5% to more than 60% in the spring of 2020.

Work-from-home has arrived at a “new normal,” well above pre-pandemic levels. It seems like executives are the last ones to realize it — but this will be the year that they do.

Childcare & mentoring

We also asked whether more executives would say they provide childcare benefits and mentoring services when Charter repeats its survey.

• The average forecast for "Will childcare become a more common corporate benefit in 2023?" was 46%
• The average forecast for "Will formal mentoring become a more common benefit in 2023?" was 49%

Extras

What happened at Southwest?

• ​Zeynep Tufekci blames software​
• ​Journalist/pilot James Fallows discusses the role of deregulation​
• ​After Hours podcast gives a more sympathetic view (13:35)​

The FTC wants to ban non-compete agreements

• ​FTC chair Lina Khan makes the case in NYT​
• ​Tim Lee reviews the evidence plus shares some stories​
• ​Economists do not like non-competes (IGM survey)​

What do people watch on TV?

• ​On actual TV (not streaming) they mostly watch sports​
• ​And on streaming? Crime procedurals​

Grab bag

• ​I interviewed three experts about the economy in 2023 for HBR​
• ​Public transit is nowhere near back to pre-pandemic levels​

Coming up...

Look out for a new forecast Sunday as the regular Sunday-Wednesday cadence is back.