New Hunger Games Movie Has Worst Opening of the Series

A heroine named Katniss proved to be catnip to the nation’s moviegoers this weekend, as “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 2” opened with $101 million in ticket sales. While that number sounds great, it was a million off of the last film, Mockingjay Part 1, and nearly $10 million lower than Catching Fire, which was the biggest earner of The Hunger Games franchise.

Of course nothing else is going to be close. The film cost $23 million to make, and drew an opening weekend crowd that was evenly split between men and women. In third was The Peanuts Movie, which brought in about $12.8 million. In the case of The Hunger Games, splitting the book was inevitable since the first two reshaped the cinematic landscape and there were only three books – one of which, Mockingjay, wasn’t almost as well-reviewed as the first two.

But total sales for the movie’s debut are the lowest of the four-film “Hunger Games” series.

He said the franchise as a whole is projected to break the $2 billion mark at the global box office. Globally, it reeled in $247 million, and even though Mockingjay couldn’t catch Catching Fire’s box office records, it bumped up the franchise’s worldwide total to a staggering $2.55 billion.

Rounding out the top five were Seth Rogen and Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s new comedy The Night Before, and Julia Roberts, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Nicole Kidman’s new flick Secret in Their Eyes, which earned $10 million and $6.6 million, respectively.

“It’s a good start to a really amusing movie”, said Rory Bruer, Sony’s president of worldwide distribution. The gangster drama Legend, starring Tom Hardy and Tom Hardy, also debuted in four locations, earning $82,884 for an average just over $20,000. The movie is a remake of an acclaimed Argentinian film by the same name.

“Mockingjay – Part 1” opened on this weekend a year ago to $121.9 million, considered at the time to be a necessary and expected dip, while fans awaited the final installment, which, if it mimicked “Twilight” or “Harry Potter”, would have snared the second highest (if not highest) opening in the series.

Coming in second behind Katniss was the James Bond spy thriller, “Spectre”, which brought in $14.6 million for its third week of release in the U.S.

Expectations run high when films become so popular and successful in such a short a time, said Paul Dergarabedian, a senior media analyst for Rentrak.

“We feel this is too early in the process to give us a full grade”, said Kevin Grayson, distribution chief at STX.