By Scott Mendelson
Besting any number of opening weekend records, The Hunger Games opened this weekend with a scorching $155 million. That’s the third-biggest opening weekend of all-time, behind The Dark Knight ($158 million) and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part II ($169 million). It’s also the biggest opening weekend for a non-sequel, non-summer movie, and the biggest debut in history for a film not released by Warner Bros. during the third weekend in July, for those keeping release-date score. It’s also Lionsgate’s highest-grossing film ever after just three days, besting the $123 million-debut of Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. While it’s Lionsgate’s most expensive movie, it’s still an example of smart budgeting as it came it at $90 million before tax credits which brought the total exposure to just $78 million. Even if you factor in the studio’s hardcore marketing over the last month, Lionsgate is surely in the black, or will be by Friday, making everything thereafter pure profit. There isn’t too much to say because this record debut has been prognosticated to the point of tedium over the last two months, as one tracking report after another continually upped the predicted opening weekend number, to the point where the film would have been called a ‘flop’ if it hadn’t opened with at least $100 million (not by me, mind you). But, yeah, Lionsgate pulled some of the best marketing in modern history (teaser/trailer 1/trailer 2), turning a relatively popular young adult book series into a mainstream media ‘event,’ which in turn made the film adaptation into a must-sample event even for audiences who only had token knowledge of the series.
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By Scott Mendelson
