With 153 million from the domestic box office and another 162 million from the foreign box office, The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, the new Hunger Games movie, crossed 300 million dollars at the box office, and grossed 315 million dollars.
But is it good?
Considering the fact that the original movies grossed between 650 million to 850 million (each!), some might look at the new film as a disappointment, or maybe even a flop.
So, is it?
Let’s take a closer look…
First, this movie is a prequel that is set decades before the original movies, without the main characters like Katniss Everdeen, Peeta Mellark and Gale Hawthorne.
They were the main draw of the franchise, so without them, you would already expect lower numbers.
While the movie focuses on the main villain from the original movies, it’s a different actor and a different time period, so it’s not exactly the same as those movies.
Not to mention that the YA genre is way less popular right now than 10 years ago, and this book was way less popular than the original books.
Second, the budget was reasonable.
You don’t spend “The Avengers” money on a small “Ant-Man” movie. Lionsgate studios made the right choice, and the movie cost “only” 100 million. While that seems a lot, most big movies these days cost at least 200 million dollars, and some of them even close to 300 million. So they have to make tons of money in order to break even.
We have actually had in the last few years quite a few movies that grossed around 300-350 million, but because their budget was around 200-300 million, there were big flops.
But with a 100 million budget, 315 million at the box office is a great and healthy result.
By the way, the movie looks amazing, and lots of people claim that it looks way better than most of the 200-300 million dollars’ movies that were released recently.
Third, the box office performance was incredible.
The movie opened with a soft 44 million at the domestic box office, but it didn’t collapse after like most movies do. Instead, it dropped only 35%. Even now, the drops are very small, and it shows how much the audience loved this movie. While the critics’ score was nice but not the best (64%), the audience really fell in love with it, and you can see it in the small drops.
At the end of the day, I think we should all call it a very solid success.
This is how you do a prequel for a mega franchise – you spend less money, because you know it won’t be as big as the original, and it pays off!!
