Hunger Games bigger than Twilight! - at least at the movies

[DungeonMasterJim]

From a Yahoo article:

Overseas, Hunger Games turned in a more muted performance for a solid bow of $59.3 million from 67 markets. The foreign tally, which came in ahead of the international debut of the first Twilight film, puts Hunger Games' worldwide opening at $214.3 million.

Hunger Games is projected to place No. 1 in virtually every foreign market, but it did best in English-speaking territories, particularly Australia, wehre it debuted to $6.7 million. Hunger Games turned in $7.5 million in the U.K. despite unseasonably warm weather, which often keeps consumers outside.

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In North America, the tentpole came in not far behind the $158.4 million earned by The Dark Knight in its July 2008 debut. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 holds the record for best debut with $169.2 million in summer 2011.

Among the past films that Hunger Games surpassed in its opening weekend were Spider-Man 3 ($151.1 million in 2007), The Twilight Saga: New Moon ($142.8 million in 2009) and The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 ($138.1 million last year).

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Hunger Games drew an A CinemaScore overall on Friday night, with those under age 25 giving it a glowing A+ and those over 25 an A-. Tweens and teens turned out in force for the film, with 39 percent of the audience younger than 18, according to CinemaScore exit polling.

Part of the movie's strength is that it is appealing to males as well as females, unlike the femme-heavy Twilight franchise, another blockbuster film property based on a young-adult book series. Males made up 39 percent of Hunger Games' Friday night audience.


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And once again, as a comics reader, it just feels like Marvel & DC are screwing up. Both the print books and now the Hunger Games movie has kicked some serious profit making ass - because of female reader/viewership. Comic readers get child slavery, rapists Amazons while books & movies get Katniss...

[Thequeerjock]

Happy to hear it was such a big hit. Hopefully someone in Hollywood takes notice and realizes not all blockbusters need to be lead by hetero white males.

[Corrina]

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And once again, as a comics reader, it just feels like Marvel & DC are screwing up. Both the print books and now the Hunger Games movie has kicked some serious profit making ass - because of female reader/viewership. Comic readers get child slavery, rapists Amazons while books & movies get Katniss...

My favorite quote from an interview, from last week, when I was on a conference call with Nina Jacobson, the Hunger Games producer.

I asked her about the prejudice against women being action movie leads and she said "Anybody who underestimates the power of girls in the marketplace does so at their peril."

I think she's my new hero. Wiki says she was a producer at Disney but was fired *literally while she was having a baby.* She also has children with her partner, a woman. And her son was in the hotel room while she was on the conference call and it cracked me up because--of course--the minute mom had to be on a phone call, he wanted to watch TV.

So glad this movie is doing well.

[bert]

yeah. . saw it came in at $155 million.

and was glad I was able to talk my friends out of going to see it today (they LOVE to see films on opening weekend).

I'm sure we'll see it in the upcoming weeks. .but with that kind of take (non 3D too!), I'm really happy we avoided these crowds.

[Cassandra]

Hunger Games is projected to place No. 1 in virtually every foreign market, but it did best in English-speaking territories, particularly Australia, wehre it debuted to $6.7 million.

Yay us Aussies! I made it a point of going on opening weekend with my husband, because I wanted this movie to do well and show that movies with female leads produced by females will make just as much money as movies about our male counterparts.

My favorite quote from an interview, from last week, when I was on a conference call with Nina Jacobson, the Hunger Games producer.

I asked her about the prejudice against women being action movie leads and she said "Anybody who underestimates the power of girls in the marketplace does so at their peril."

^ This, this so damn much.
It was only when I watched the documentary 'Miss Representation' did it really hit home to me how few women there are producing, writing or starring as the main character in big blockbuster movies. And not because they're not interested but sadly more often than not women are overlooked because someone feels that 'oh, this should be written by a man' or 'this should be produced by a man,' or more often than not 'men won't go and see a movie about a woman.' Catherine Hardwicke (who produced Twilight) noted that even after she produced the first wildly successful movie, every subsequent movie has been directed by a man.
One thing that the documentary noted is that women are more likely to go to the movies, or watch a t.v. show than men. So advertisers and production companies try to aim their products are a very specific male audience because they know women will usually go and see the movie, or watch the t.v. show any way.

[DonC]

And once again, as a comics reader, it just feels like Marvel & DC are screwing up. Both the print books and now the Hunger Games movie has kicked some serious profit making ass - because of female reader/viewership. Comic readers get child slavery, rapists Amazons while books & movies get Katniss...

I don't think the traditional comics model would sell to teenage girls. I think a yearly series of graphic novels would attract more of an audience. Also, the publisher would need to find the money to advertise outside of the comics industry. And page count and price point would also be issues. You would probably need about 300 pages--in color, preferably--to tell the story equivalent to one prose novel. Yet you couldn't price the book at more than $20US.

Plus, yes, they need to do content teenage girls actually want to read.

Not an impossible task, but one the major companies would probably prefer to watch the other guy try.

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Man, $155M. Glad I didn't go. I'll wait until the crowds die down.

In May.

[Ray G.]

Twilight has a female lead too, although I'd definitely hesitate to say she's the draw for the movies at all.

Anything that knocks down Twilight is good in my book.

[sunbird]

Comic readers get child slavery, rapists Amazons while books & movies get Katniss...

Not that I don't fully appreciate the gist of your argument (I agree with you that Marvel and DC couldn't find their arses with an atlas in this respect), isn't the book and film of Hunger Games about children being sent to a reality TV slaughter? It isn't the content that contrasts so much as the tone in this instance.

[Ryan Elliott]

I'm seeing some posts on Reddit about how some people are going "Team this" and "Team that" and such.

It's just the next Twilight.

[Ray G.]

I'm seeing some posts on Reddit about how some people are going "Team this" and "Team that" and such.

It's just the next Twilight.

Harry Potter had that too. Shipper wars.