Welcome to Nerdoween! Throughout the month of October, we’ll be celebrating everything spooky, macabre, and just plain weird. Nerdoween 2017 is presented by Alpha, our interactive membership service, which offers you exclusive content from Nerdist and Geek & Sundry, as well as a 10% discount on all of our merch.
This year we’re asking you to help us celebrate Nerdoween by choosing the biggest, baddest pop culture creature of all time in our Monster Madness tournament. The competition will run for all of October, and when it ends some of you will walk home with your very own Halloween treats courtesy of us here at Nerdist and our interactive online Alpha community. We’ve selected 16 of the most infamous, monstrous (literally and figuratively) beasts from across film, television, books, comics, and more, to crown one as the creepiest of them all, using the criteria of iconic stature, physical size, and power.
So who got an invite to our virtual monster mash party? Our group includes: Godzilla, T-Rex, the Stay Puft Marshmallow, the Kraken, King Kong, Rancor, the Cloverfield monster, Maleficent the Dragon (please don’t ask how she beat out Ursula–there are still some very sore feelings about this around the office), Colossal Titan, the Sandworm from Dune) Drogon, Knifehead from Pacific Rim, Starro, Fin Fang Foom, Cthulhu, and Balrog.
Here’s what you need to know. First, using the form above, fill out your bracket and submit it by 11:59 pm PST, October 9 (that’s a strict deadline). Starting the next day, there will be one matchup per day, and every winning monster will be determined by a Twitter poll that runs for 24 hours (except those that run over the weekend, which will operate for 72 hours). The polls will close every weekday live during Nerdist News Talks Back, and the next matchup will begin at the end of the show.
Nerdist News Talks Back airs live every weekday at 1:00 p.m. PST on our YouTube and Alpha channels, and throughout October Monster Madness will be one of our daily topics.
Image: HBO
The first head-to-head begins on October 10th, and it will end–when else?–on October 31st, so we can celebrate Halloween by revealing the ultimate monster live on Nerdist News Talks Back.
If you submitted a perfect bracket you’ll have until November 6 to alert us, and we’ll announce your name live the next day, November 7th, on the show. If we have multiple perfect brackets we’ll choose one ultimate winner at random (don’t worry, everyone else will still get a free 60-day Alpha code or Alpha store credit). If no one fills out a perfect bracket, we’ll choose a winner at random. Hey, we’re not going to end Nerdoween and Monster Madness without giving out some treats! (And not just because we know that’s how we’ll end up with an office covered in toilet paper.)
Image: Lucasfilm
So fill out your bracket now, vote for your favorite monster every day on Twitter, and tune in to Nerdist News Talks Back every afternoon live to find out who won their showdown. It’s the most wonderful, spookiest time of the year, and with your help we’re going to make it even better.
Who do you think will win? Who do you hope will win? Which monster should we have included? Share all of your creepy thoughts with us in the comments below.
Featured Image: Toho/Universal Pictures
