“The Hunger Games: Catching Fire” Set November Box-Office Record

“The Hunger Games: Catching Fire” Set November Box-Office Record

The second installment of the “Hunger Games” franchise, “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire” set a box office record for November as it generated $161.1 million in sales in North America from Thursday to Sunday.

The movie franchise is considered as the successor to the “Twilight” movie series. However, the demographics of the first movie consisted of 71 percent females when it was released a year ago.

On the other hand, the sequel had better demographics since around 59 percent of the moviegoers on its opening weekend were females. Thorough marketing gave the movie this demographic, which is beneficial for the franchise.

Lionsgate executives revealed that a balanced audience was drawn by “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.” Ticket sales of the movie also broke the previous November record of $155.5 million by “The Twilight Saga: New Moon” when it was released in 2009.

International sales reached $146.6 million. Chief Marketing Officer Tim Palen of Lionsgate said that the audience number may grow exponentially if the figures are maintained.

The producer of the movie, Nina Jacobson, revealed that the popularity of the source material of the franchise increased in Europe following the release of the first movie last year.

RottenTomatoes.com revealed that the movie was well-made, which allowed it to do well on the box office. A number of critics also indicated that the movie is worthy of a place in pop culture together with other movies, such as “The Empire Strikes Back.”

A new director, Francis Lawrence, was brought in by Jacobson and Lionsgate for “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.” Two new screenwriters were also brought into the team, Michael Arndt and Simon Beaufoy. The final polish of the movie was done by Scott Frank, who was not credited in the movie, according to Jacobson.

The budget of the movie was also increased to around $130 million from the $78 million of the first movie. Jennifer Lawrence was also paid around $10 million for her role as Katniss Everdeen. This was higher from the base salary of around $500,000 in the first movie.

“The Hunger Games: Catching Fire” was shown in 4,163 locations across the North American market.

Posted by Kade Quinn on Monday November 25 2013, 1:14 AM EST. Ref: NY Times. Link. All trademarks acknowledged. Filed under Entertainment, Featured News. Comments and Trackbacks closed. Follow responses: RSS 2.0