Box Office Predictions, Livestreaming Longevity, Post-'Mad Men' Careers, and More: This Week's Odds

#1. ‘Tomorrowland’ Will Win the Box Office This Weekend

Director Brad Bird and screenwriter Damon Lindelof’s hotly anticipated new movie Tomorrowland is set to properly kick off the summer movie season, but will its retro-future Disney-based original story be enough to de-throne the dulcet, moneymaking tones of last week’s runaway box office champ, Pitch Perfect 2? Tomorrowland is rated PG, so it’ll definitely rake in quite a lot from the kids out there who can bring along moms who're keen to watch two hours of George Clooney. But the teens love the pop music, the spending of money, and the going to the movies, making PP2 no pushover. Dudes will be too busy re-watching Mad Max: Fury Road, so they’re not a factor, and neither is Avengers: Age of Ultron which has slowly declined in grosses despite becoming the highest grossing movie of 2015 so far. It’s a pretty evenly split weekend, and the summer blockbuster season is a week-to-week thing, so a win for Tomorrowland won’t be easy. ODDS: 3/1

#2. Live Streaming Apps Will Have Actual Longevity

The next thing for the Internet to eat right up are apps like Meerkat and Periscope, whose smartphone livestreaming is enigmatic/popular. People have to broadcast pointless details of their life in real time somehow; Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, or Instagram only satisfy that need in bursts. Is it enough for Periscope and Meerkat to only livestream and not much else? If they don’t expand upon that idea sometime soon they're doomed to fad status. As this NY Mag post so eloquently puts it, “I still cannot figure out how to use them — or, more to the point, what use I might have for them. They don’t make a lot of sense as a portal for political news. They don’t make sense as a social network. And they don't necessarily make sense as a breaking-news outlet either. I just do not see the use case. And I fear there might not be one.” ODDS: 9/1

#3. A Major Movie Franchise Will Lose a Director Over the Memorial Day Weekend

Long weekends are hell on franchise movie directors. A year ago news broke that fanboy auteur Edgar Wright was booted from the Marvel movie Ant-Man. It seems Wright wanted a little too much Wright in his movie, while Marvel wanted the same kind of bland identity from a non-entity director they’ve ridden to riches in the past. Any other Friday this news would've thrown fanboys into a massive tizzy, but Marvel timed it right: people have kicking-back to do and can't be bothered to whine about Edgar Wright. Director Michelle Maclaren left the big budget Wonder Woman movie last month, and newbie Josh Trank was kicked off of a new Star Wars movie early this month. Who’s next? It could happen soon. ODDS: 4/1

#4. Apple Will Expand into New Mediums Next Year

Apple tech news drops when you least expect it, but CEO Tim Cook’s first new product launch since Steve Jobs's 2011 death was the Apple Watch, a product that many saw coming a mile away. Do Cook and co. have any tricks in the next year, or will they keep building on their core products until total Apple world domination is complete? Activist investor Carl Icahn actually wrote a letter to Cook explaining that in his estimate the company would potentially be worth up to $2.2 trillion (yes, with a "T") if it developed television and automobile products. With rival companies like Google already in the car game, and Netflix becoming more and more ubiquitous to the point of comparing themselves — at least in a business sense — to Apple, wouldn’t it be just so Apple to up and show the competition how it’s done? ODDS: 8/1

#5. Elisabeth Moss will have the best post-‘Mad Men’ career

Coming off of a massively successful and culturally influential longform whiskey commercial like Mad Men is a tough break. For one, you are now an indelible part of the zeitgeist, but you’re also pigeonholed into that role for the rest of your life. Jon Hamm will always be Don Draper, just as Kelsey Grammar will always be Frasier Crane, James Gandolfini was always Tony Soprano, and Jerry Seinfeld will always be Seinfeld. Will any Mad Men actors graduate to larger careers? The most promising Mad Men grad will undoubtedly be Elisabeth Moss, already a veteran of The West Wing winding down, already with a pretty strong series of indie film gems in her resume. She's versatile enough to play dramatic without veering to close enough to her iconic Mad Men character. ODDS: 2/1

#6. London Will Get an NFL Expansion Team

All signs point to Los Angeles either getting an expansion team or having a current NFL team move there in the near future, but what happens if the league wants to really stretch their reach? Six NFL teams played games in London last year, and the Brits’ reliance on football over American football may not be as severe as you think. Only 4 percent of Londoners are NFL fans, but that number gets a whole lot more interesting when you factor in London’s humongous population (10 million), which shakes out to 400,000 fans opening their wallets and plenty of others watching at the pub. Toronto would also be a good candidate for international expansion, but Ontarians haven't turned out much for the Bills' few "home" games in the Rogers Centre. Gotta be London. Why else would they keep flying teams over there? ODDS: 3/1