“Hunger Games” Has $214M Global Debut

"Hunger Games" Has $214M Global Debut

The much-awaited action movie "The Hunger Games" got a staggering $155 million at its opening at Lions Gate Entertainment, going beyond expectations and marking the history as the third-highest domestic film opening.

The Lions Gate Entertainment drama based on the best-selling young-adults novel which portrays an oppressive society's teen death match added $59.3 million from 67 markets for a global haul of $214.3 million.

The gigantic debut of the film in the U.S. and Canada got a very high rank placing second only to last summer's "Harry Potter" finale and 2008 Batman movie "The Dark Knight."

The movie “Hunger Games” brings huge success to Lions Gate, a smaller Hollywood studio best known for the "Saw" horror series and comedian Tyler Perry's films.

"The first movie in a franchise, to post a number like this, is really insane. There is no other word for it," said Phil Contrino, editor of Boxoffice.com.

"'Harry Potter' had seven movies before it got to that point, and 'Dark Knight' had years and years of building the Batman brand. This movie comes and hangs with them in the same league," Contrino said.

"Hunger Games" outranked the domestic debuts for the four "Twilight" films, which Lions Gate bought from Summit Entertainment in January.

"Hunger Games" brought up an average of $37,467 at 4,137 domestic locations over the weekend.

Audiences tremendously applauded the film’s adaptation of the novel, “Hunger Games,” written by Suzanne Collins, giving the film an "A" grade in polling by survey firm CinemaScore.

Posted by Kade Quinn on Monday March 26 2012, 3:13 AM EST. Ref: Reuters. All trademarks acknowledged. Filed under Entertainment, Featured News. Comments and Trackbacks closed. Follow responses: RSS 2.0