Unfortunately, the final installment of “The Hunger Games” series felt more like a auto sputtering into a gas station on fumes than a bullet train speeding to its final destination.
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Film studio Lionsgate had predicted at least a $120 million opening domestically, which was considered conservative by industry watchers.
For most films, this would be a coup, but The Hunger Games had its own records to beat, and this sets a new low for the four-film franchise.
Rounding out the top five was STX Entertainment’s “Secret in Their Eyes”, starring Nicole Kidman, Julia Roberts and Chiwetel Ejiofor. “Night” grossed more than $10 million and “Secret” took in more than $6 million. To date, it has only earned $9.8 million from those regions, which include Italy and China. PART 2 has hiccups that reinforces why PART 1 and PART 2 belong as one movie, the films as a whole will live on as inspiration for young girls everywhere due to the strong, young, female victor. “Opening early seemed like a really good prelude to the Thanksgiving weekend where it will expand beautifully”, said Rory Bruer, Sony’s president of worldwide distribution.
But it was the quietest first weekend for the series, which began in 2012. Catching Fire was the highest-grossing of the Hunger Games films, earning $158 million after the first weekend of its 2013 debut. By contrast, we’ve seen top-performing films like “The Avengers”, “Jurassic World”, and “Avatar” within the last six years. Because the movie was so captivating, it felt as though the time went by very quickly (It did not feel like I had been sitting there for the full two hours and 17 minutes, yet I had).
Although Mockingjay Part 2 concludes the adaptations of Suzanne Collins’s novels, there has been suggestions that the franchise will continue past this point.
What, if anything, did you see at the movies this weekend? With all the focus on theHunger Games release, these two movies fell a little under the radar and will not have a significant impact on the box office in the upcoming weeks. This is why the $101 million opening weekend gross of “Mockingjay” would in any way be counted as less than stellar.
When it comes to movies adapted from books, they can either be a big hit or serious disappointment.
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Check back each week for box office previews and results and the latest movie reviews from 22News. However, it’s all but inevitable that the new “Star Wars” film will topple “Mockingjay” in mid-December if it can hang on that long. The Hunger Games is a hugely popular franchise across the globe and has made $1.1bn since its debut film three years ago.
