Monday Morning Quarterback Part II
By BOP Staff
March 21, 2012
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Kim Hollis: Six months ago, how much did you know about The Hunger Games? How much do you know about it now? What are your expectations for what has become the most anticipated new movie property in several years?
Matthew Huntley: Six months ago, I knew absolutely nothing about The Hunger Games. Thanks to my co-workers, I now know it's one of the most popular young adult novels of the past decade, and thanks to Hollywood-oriented websites, I also know it's expected to have an opening as large as Twilight. This all seems very familiar to me, because back in the summer of 2008, I had no idea what Twilight was until I saw it featured on the cover of Entertainment Weekly. Clearly I need to read more!
I expect The Hunger Games to open somewhere in between the original Twilight and New Moon, so I'm going to say $100 million its first weekend, although I think that may be too bullish. Either way, it will be a success, if it isn't already given its pre-opening ticket sales.
Tom Houseman: I downloaded the audiobook of The Hunger Games in October because I figured it would be easy enough to follow while I was driving to and from work. Other than nearly killing me when I started crying near the end of the book while driving home, I have nothing but glowing things to say about it. The whole trilogy is really spectacular and easily lends itself to cinematic adaptation. I don't pretend to know as much about box-office as anybody else who writes for this site, so I will just say that on its opening weekend The Hunger Games will make eleventy kerjillion dollars if this is a just world and if eleventy kerjillion is a number (I'm pretty sure it is, though). I'm curious to see how well it holds up on its second weekend when the fanbase will have gotten its fix and it will be facing competition from Wrath of the Titans.
Bruce Hall: I read all three books in one week a couple of years ago. Bam, bam, bam. They're easy reads, definitely meant for young adults, but they're not works of art by any stretch of the imagination. And the conclusion is dull and anticlimactic in relation to the rest of the story. But they're hard to put down once you've started. The Hunger Games series is an effective study on liberty versus fascism juxtaposed over adolescence - written from the perspective of a child FOR children. Yet it's done so in a way that's undeniably appealing to adults, as well. It's colorful, it's exciting, it's surprisingly moving, and the characters are for the most part, well drawn out and accessible. But the most striking thing to me about The Hunger Games is that the prose was so artfully written. The story is very well structured, which is of course essential. But the words and imagery ended up being more effective than I'd expected going in. It's good stuff and I can say I liked it considerably more than Harry Potter's Rand-esque deluge of print, which could have been about 1500 pages shorter. It's like base elements of Star Trek meeting The Prisoner mixed with a "Choose Your Own Adventure" book from the 1980s. If the films are even half as clever and inventive as the books, this thing is going to be massive. Keep your eyes open and get ready; The Hunger Games is going to be a hell of a story.
Tim Briody: Six months ago I knew The Hunger Games was a popular young adult fiction series, and figured it was Twilight-ish. One week before its release, I know three things: that it's not Twilight-ish, there's a decent chance it's a *good* movie, and it's going to open to over $100 million.
Shalimar Sahota: I knew hardly anything about The Hunger Games six months ago. Only that there was a film in the works that happens to be based on a book, and it sounds a bit like Battle Royale. I've since read up about the film. I'm guessing that as Twilight dies down, this'll be the next franchise to fill the void. The hype appears to be justified, as so far the reviews are all good, so maybe it'll play well over the coming weeks rather than blowing it's top just on the opening weekend. Like Tom, I'd actually be more interested to see how it plays on its second weekend. Fandango is already reporting sold out screenings for this weekend. Add in the midnight screenings and some are predicting that an opening of around $130 - $140 million could be on the cards. I'm going to go against the stupendously high expectations and say that I think it'll open somewhere between $95 - $105 million, maybe a little below the $100 million mark, which is still not a bad thing.
David Mumpower: I was one of the many people who bought Mockingjay the first day it was available. I say many people because it was the bestseller on Amazon that day. That number of fans feels like a drop in the bucket now, though. The Hunger Games has evolved into a property with massive awareness that evokes a good bit of curiosity even from people who know little to nothing of it. I have always maintained that this is one of the most commercial concepts in recent memory. I felt confident six months ago that this title could open on the scale of 300. What we have evaluated in recent years is the manner through which best selling novels evolve into motion picture events. Twilight has been the comparison most often utilized yet I never believed that was apt. Twilight is like Titanic in that it appeals primarily to one hardcore demographic, women. The Hunger Games is much more like Harry Potter in that the concept includes a massive adrenaline surge of action, thereby appealing to men as well.
The surprise has been watching this title evolve from a strong contender for one of the best openings pre-summer ever to this. We are now speaking as if not reaching $100 million is just okay relative to our expanding expectations. Just think about that for a moment. There are four "new" properties that have ever opened north of $90 million. Those are Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone ($90.3 million), Alice in Wonderland ($116.1 million), Iron Man ($102.1 million) and Spider-Man ($114.8 million). Iron Man was created in 1968, Spider-Man debuted in 1962 and Alice in Wonderland was written in 1865.
Only Harry Potter had a short window from the debut of the book in 1998 until the launch of the movie in 2001 yet still managed a $90+ million debut. It is all but impossible for a new property to explode into the public consciousness like this. Consider that Twilight, for all of its triumphs, "only" started with $69.6 million in the same three year gap from debut of the first book to the first movie adaptation. Given the tracking for The Hunger Games, it will approach that number within 36 hours of its debut in theaters. There is even an outside chance it does that in a single day. Alice in Wonderland represents the largest movie debut ever for a "new" property with $116.1 million. Tracking data, unreliable though it may be, indicates that The Hunger Games will probably break that record if not destroy it. We are witnessing one of the most remarkable movie stories of the 2000s.
Kim Hollis: I had definitely heard of The Hunger Games six months ago, as I was championing it to friends more than a year ago. Oddly, I grabbed it on the Kindle as something good to read while visiting my parents for the holidays, and it just happened that my sister (a professor of literature, including classes on Harry Potter) had given my *other* sister the books as a gift. Since then, I've seen the buzz spread through a message board that I frequent as well as becoming a popular book of choice amongst any number of friends. Here's the thing about it: even people who haven't read the books are suddenly excited for this film. It's an event picture. And it trumps Twilight because it appeals to everyone rather than just females. With every passing week, I've been raising my estimate of what the film could do - and I was thinking $70 million several months ago. Now, I think we could potentially double that number. I don't know that I've ever seen a film with this kind of wide awareness. I'm not kidding when I say the movie and/or books come up in conversation several times a day.
Reagen Sulewski: Thanks to all your incessant yammering, I know way more about this book series than I really care to. This has been a slam dunk production since it was announced (and since they've kept the budget absolutely minuscule, it's a license to print money). Now that Harry Potter has ended and Twilight is entering the home stretch, audiences are looking for the next big thing to obsess over. What's going to turn this film from a "success" to a "great big honking success" is going to come down to a matter of timing. Once you get over $100 million, the numbers are really kind of arbitrary and subject to so many other factors that it's not really worth quibbling about what kind of hit that makes it, so it's money baths for everyone!
Max Braden: I read the first book in the series a year ago on the recommendation of friends. (Captivating writing plot, hateful characters). In the summer, I made the prediction that the movie would open to less than $50 million. Of course that seems crazy now, but I had my reasons: this is a brutal action movie with a female star opening in March with a smaller base than Harry Potter or Twilight. Twilight also had a romance plot that Hunger Games lacks, so I see the material splitting the gender demographics. And I was remembering the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie, which only earned $46 million in its first five days. As a result, I was expecting a cautious opening followed by huge legs and tremendous opening weekend from the sequel. Obviously at this point it would be a major shocker to open that low. I'm still bearish on it, though, so I think the execs are full of their own hype and I won't be surprised at all if this opens below $100 million. That's still a big number, and I still expect huge legs and a recordbreaking sequel.
Edwin Davies: I was actually reading the series six months ago since, after learning about that Jennifer Lawrence had been cast and being a huge fan of her work in Winter's Bone (which everyone should check out), I felt that I needed to check the books out. I enjoyed them a great deal and thought that the world of the story was compelling and interesting, but since reading them I've pretty much cut myself off from anything relating to the movie up until the last week, when I tentatively started reading reviews to see if they had done justice to the books.
Like Max, I didn't think that the film would open to huge numbers when I was reading the books since I felt that it was too violent to be a crossover hit, and also because I wasn't really aware of just how huge a phenomenon the series had become. Now, I have a better understanding that, yes, they are a pretty huge deal, and my expectations have adjusted accordingly. I think that something around about the level of Alice In Wonderland's opening ($114.8 million) is highly possible, but part of me wants to say that it'll be even higher than that, considering how many screenings have already sold out across the country. We seem to be looking at a record-breaker here, and I'm really excited to see how high it flies next weekend. Not as excited as I am to check out the film, but still pretty excited.