Top 12 Film Industry Stories of 2012: #4
The Hunger Games Fills the Void
By David Mumpower
January 8, 2013
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Marketers are compelled to hype franchises because of the cottage industries they create. Board games, trading cards, toys, apparel and other merchandising opportunities are lucrative secondary markets. These exist in addition to the revenue attained via a movie’s release.
People have a tendency to vote with their wallets. We demonstrate devotion to beloved movies by buying the various products listed above and more. In this regard, a Tentpole title’s box office is only a first step in terms of revenue opportunities. This is the vacuum created when Harry Potter and Twilight retired from the list of active story projects.
Enter The Hunger Games.
In October of 2010, Mockingjay debuted as the number one selling book in America. 450,000 copies sold immediately with publisher Scholastic announcing an immediate printing of 400,000 more books. It eventually sold over 1.6 million copies in a calendar year and has become a mainstay on the Best Seller list.
Even before the trilogy was finished, a theatrical adaptation of the three movies had long been a foregone conclusion. Lionsgate cleverly acquired the rights for a comically low $200,000 in March of 2009. Despite the rising studio’s well documented financial woes, they spared no expense with regards to the production of The Hunger Games, the first movie in the franchise.
A budget of $88 million was announced for the project although Director Gary Ross and super-producer Nina Jacobson somehow made the movie for $10 million under budget, a virtual impossibility in the movie industry these days. Virtually everyone involved could sense that this dystopian film concept was powerful enough to become an overnight sensation. And they were right.
Perhaps the origin of this confidence was the casting. Jennifer Lawrence was the awards season darling of early 2011 thanks to her masterful portrayal of Ree Dolly in Winter’s Bone. At the age of 20, Lawrence was nominated for Best Actress, thereby becoming the second youngest person ever lauded in the category.
With her indie film reputation secured, Lawrence naturally glided into mainstream cinema as Mystique in X-Men: First Class. That title grossed $350 million worldwide. In a span of only two movies, the young actress became a lavishly praised thespian with a legitimate blockbuster on her resume. Only two weeks after Lawrence enjoyed prime seating at the Oscars, she defeated several other well-known teenagers to become Katniss Everdeen, heroine of The Hunger Games.
With Lawrence in the fold, the production staff of The Hunger Games needed to decide quickly regarding two other roles. The Hunger Games trilogy is ostensibly a love triangle of sorts because that is what the Twilight crowd expects from teen literature. Katniss Everdeen is torn between her childhood friend, Gale, and her Hunger Games opponent, Peeta.
As Hollywood insiders began to appreciate the potency of The Hunger Games, potential young actors jostled for the right to play one of the seminal roles in the trilogy. In the end, Josh Hutcherson was chosen for the role of Peeta. This was notable because Hutcherson had been on the shortlist to become the new Spider-Man before eventually losing the role to Andrew Garfield. Hutcherson’s career is much better for the (temporary) loss. And speaking of Marvel characters, Thor himself, Chris Hemsworth, has a younger brother named Liam who happened to be the perfect age and (massive) body size to play Gale. The cast of The Hunger Games had its three anchors and filming was ready to begin.
Oddly, once the production of The Hunger Games began, there was a great deal of radio silence. Rather than film on a Hollywood lot, a remote locality in North Carolina was chosen. The largely uninhabited mountain range provided a cloak of anonymity that will be impossible for the later sequels in the franchise to achieve. When The Hunger Games wrapped, they couldn’t even give away many of the props used on the set. Many a fan of the series was furious when they later discovered that Katniss’ bow was sitting in the same spot in the woods for months before a collectibles trafficker stumbled upon it. That’s how low key the production was, another rarity for a Hollywood blockbuster.
How did an unheralded production shoot evolve into a blockbuster opening weekend? Social media combined with clever marketing created a fevered pitch of restless fans. Thanks to various Facebook games, people had the ability to monitor all facets of the world of The Hunger Games even as filming occurred on a desolate mountain top. Pitch perfect hype enhanced the perception that The Hunger Games was The Next Big Thing in movies.
This philosophy was confirmed a month prior to the release of The Hunger Games. On February 23, 2012, Fandango began to pre-sell tickets for the movie. Everyone was taken aback by what happened next. The relatively unknown title shattered the existing record for first day ticket sales for an upcoming release. In an interesting twist, one of the franchises it sought to replace, Twilight, had been the previous record holder for a calendar year.
The feeding frenzy for tickets was such that at the height of opening day’s sales, 17 tickets per second were purchased. 22% of opening day tickets were purchased through Fandango, easily the largest percentage ever for the online retailer. 92% of Fandango’s sales that weekend were The Hunger Games purchases.
As reports of massive pre-purchasing were published, the question became not if The Hunger Games would be huge but instead exactly how big it would be. There were some analysts who refused to believe that an unknown property could debut at a level similar to existing franchises such as Spider-Man, Batman, Pirates of the Caribbean and Twilight. Skepticism is oftentimes the strongest weapon in box office analysis but in this instance, it was unfounded.
Some estimates placed the film at a solid $82 million opening weekend while most fell in the $115 million range. Either of those numbers would have been astonishing, particularly considering that the first Harry Potter film debuted to $90 million while Twilight started with a $69.6 million opening weekend.
On Friday, March 23, 2012, only 13 months after Jennifer Lawrence had put on a beautiful dress and enjoyed great seats at the Academy Awards, The Hunger Games earned $67.3 million. On its opening day. The first movie in the trilogy effectively matched the opening weekend of Twilight in 24 hours. It was only getting started with the impressive box office feats.
Domestic box office for the opening weekend of The Hunger Games was $152.5 million. At the time, it was the third largest debut of all time. Amusingly, it only wound up being the third largest opening weekend of 2012 but that’s a different discussion. Along the way, The Hunger Games claimed the fifth largest single day of box office until that point. It also easily surpassed Alice in Wonderland’s $116.1 million to become the best March opener of all time, a record that should stand for several years. It also beat all Twilight movies in terms of opening weekend as well as every Harry Potter film save for the last one. In other words, The Hunger Games debuted as a franchise at higher levels than the existing ones for the franchises it sought to replace.
There was no end in sight for the immediate and total popularity of The Hunger Games. The title easily exceeded analyst expectations for frontloading, becoming only the 13th title to earn $400 million domestically. It eventually finished with North American box office of $408 million, which was at the time the 11th best box office performance ever.
In terms of global revenue, The Hunger Games has not been quite as strong an earner, unsurprising for the first title in a franchise. It eventually claimed $690 million in global revenue, the eighth best total of the year. Importantly, this was easily the best performance for a new property, besting Pixar’s Brave by over $150 million.
Also, just in case anyone is inclined to believe that The Hunger Games was an isolated incident rather than the first of many franchise blockbusters, consider this. Fandango, the number one fan of the franchise (and understandably so), recently announced interesting poll results. They tested consumers regarding the upcoming blockbusters of 2013. Industry heavyweights such as Iron Man, Star Trek and The Hobbit all have sequels scheduled for release this year. What was the runaway choice for first place? You guessed it. Catching Fire, the sequel to The Hunger Games, appears poised to duplicate if not surpass the epic performance of its predecessor.
The Hunger Games has filled the vacuum.