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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.

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