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Edwin Davies: I'll remember it as the series that made Jennifer Lawrence a household name, two years after I saw her performance in Winter's Bone and hoped that she would go on to big things. In a broader sense, I hope that I'll remember it as a series that proved that films about female characters can earn huge amounts of money, can draw a big audience, and in so doing helped Hollywood to find new stories than the male-centric ones it has always pursued. I don't know if that will happen, given how intractable the industry is when it comes to change and representation, but I really hope that turns out to be true.

David Mumpower: I'll look back on The Hunger Games franchise as a marvelous concept executed perfectly for two films. I'll also remember that Lionsgate made twin mistakes that permanently damaged the brand. They chose to remain faithful to far and away the worst book in the trilogy, and they split a boring 390-page story into two films simply to earn more money. In the process, they damaged the brand to the point that people are going to remember the franchise as fading away when it could have gone out in a blaze of Girl On Fire glory after three films.

Kim Hollis: Do you think that one good Mockingjay film would have made more money than the two so-so films that were released? Even if your answer is no, do you think it was still worth it if it causes the franchise to be maligned?

Ben Gruchow: I figure that a single Mockingjay film would probably hit about $400 million in domestic revenue (it still wouldn't have had IMAX engagements, if it'd come out in 2014). My next thought was basically this: Assuming that a single Mockingjay film would've been budgeted at, say, $180 million - I think this is an appropriate escalation from Catching Fire - and it brought in domestic revenue of $400 million, then two Mockingjay films would have to bring in a combined domestic total of $400 million plus whatever the increase in budget was (in this case, $70 million). Mockingjay Part 2 is going to hit $200 million; anything it earns beyond that would be financial justification for making two films instead of one.

I do think that a single-film Mockingjay entry would be tighter and faster-paced, but in the light of just how big the drop was for this weekend, I don't really think that it would have been any better received by critics or by audiences. When Part 1 was about to be released, there was a TV spot or something like it that gave the tagline “The Games Are Over.” Inaccurate, really, depending on what you lump under the umbrella of a game in the final book, but I digress; that TV spot and that marketing pitch constituted the beginning of the drop-off in attendance. No matter whether it was one part or two, Mockingjay does not have an actual Games event, and I think we're seeing how much of an audience held that as the biggest factor. Again, I don't really think it can be down to an assessment that the book was less well-liked among readers of the series, because the final entry in the Twilight series was even less well-received, and it produced a two-part adaptation with almost identical grosses. The lack of a Games event, I think, turned off a big segment of the movie-going population that neither read nor cared about the individual reception of the book series entries.

I don't know if I'd apply the word “maligned” to the series, in either book or film form. “Victim of audience fatigue,” yes. At the end of the day, we're still looking at a series that, when considering and comparing the first film, second film, and both parts of a two-part finale - we're seeing ticket sales comparable to the Harry Potter series. That'd be a moot point if the story and films weren't also good, but they are, and I think the Hunger Games series is going to survive the irritation of a studio-mandated split. Fatigue will pass, as long as the market isn't continually saturated with new installments of the same product.

Jason Barney: I think a single Mockingjay film would have been BIG but I can't see that it would have been as large as what Lionsgate decided to move forward with. For a single Mockingjay film to match what looks like the two separate entries will total.....those would be ALL TIME numbers. I don't think it would have been possible.

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