Lionsgate
EXCLUSIVE: Lionsgate’s prequel The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes looks at a Thursday evening in between $5.75 million to $6 million after performances that began at 3 p.m.
These numbers are not from the studio either and we could see a slightly different result by morning. While some will be quick to shout that last weekend’s Marvel Studios failure, “The Marvels,” began its weekend journey with a $6.6 million Thursday night, making it its lowest opening ever at $47 million for a Disney MCU title, please note that Songbirds & Snakes cost $100 million, half of The Marvels’ $200 million. In addition, Lionsgate always covers its risk on major titles through a large proportion of foreign sales.
Tom Blyth and Rachel Zegler in “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” Lionsgate
The forecasts for the weekend were as follows $50M+ states, $100 million+ worldwide. We’ll see where this lands. Part of the uphill battle for the film is that it has a brand new cast without franchise star Jennifer Lawrence and a crossover character from the core franchise, namely Coriolanus Snow. Similar to the first film, when Lawrence was not yet a star name, Lionsgate is putting Suzanne Collins on stage for the relaunch of the brand: West Side Story actress Rachel Zegler as a fiery homage to Lucy Gray Baird and the even fresher British actor Tom Blyth as Snow.
The preview night of “Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes” isn’t far off from Fast & Furious spinoff “Hobbs & Shaw,” which opened at $5.8 million (screenings start at 7 p.m.) and opened at $60 million cost; This is despite the fact that the film was extremely male-oriented for The Hunger Games’ female audience. Another competitor being used is Amazon/MGM’s Creed III, which earned $5.4 million in Thursday night previews and has a 3-day return of $58.3 million. Closer to the female demo is The Conjuring spinoff The Nun, which brought in $5.4 million on Thursday and $53.8 million over three days, with women scoring a 49% rating over the weekend, according to CinemaScore.
Warner Bros.
Note that Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes would never release a preview anywhere close to the recent Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2, which came out in November 2015 and grossed $16 million on Thursday night, making it the lowest domestic opening in the Collins Series of $102.7 M. Songbirds & Snakes also didn’t have to emulate the 2016 Harry Potter spinoff “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,” which grossed $8.75 million on Thursday night. dollars and on the third day there were 74.4 million US dollars in the USA/Canada. Basically, The Hunger Games fan base isn’t as big as Harry Potter’s. (For Fantastic Beasts it was 55% women, for Mockingjay 2 it was 60% women, with the majority of Potter fans being older at 65% over 25, while Mockingjay 2 was 50/50 for those under/over 25 divided.)
Part of the challenge for Lionsgate in getting audiences excited about the prequel is that Hunger Games fans weren’t fully aware that there was a new novel from Collins: It was published in the middle of the Corona crisis in May 2020 and only achieved 500,000 sales the first week, per NPD BookScan, when bookstores were closed. This sales figure ultimately rose to 3.5 million copies sold.
While 112 critics on Rotten Tomatoes give Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes the lowest score in the franchise at 64% fresh, the series has often proven itself to be critical and has held up quite well during the holiday season. Mockingjay 2 has collected $198.5 million in its first ten days of release thanks to the Thanksgiving stretch.
Social media analytics company RelishMix says social media convo for Songbirds & Snakes is “mixedly positive, as snarky Gen Z fans and younger new Millennial fans whistle their praises for the latest entry in the series.” Many are fascinated by the nostalgia the franchise evokes from their childhood: “14-year-old me is so happy and the 25-year-old is sobbing.” Others note: “Look, I have absolutely no idea what this book is about but when I saw that bow pose, it was like seeing Katniss again. ‘This film will heal traumas from my childhood.'”
From left to right: John Dory (Eric André), Spruce (Daveed Diggs), Baby Branch (Justin Timberlake), Floyd (Troye Sivan) and Clay (Kid Cudi) Universal
Other preview figures we’ve heard about, but which Universal hasn’t commented on, include those from DreamWorks Animation Trolls band together with about $2 million off showtimes that began at 2 p.m. This threequel is looking to open with a high of $20 million and a low of $30 million. The film also has the lowest RT rating in the franchise, with critics fresh at 62%. If that preview value is accurate, it’s a hair above the $900,000 of Trolls’ Thursday previews and $1.7 million above Illumination/Universal’s Sing’s Tuesday night previews.
TriStar and Spyglass Media have Eli Roths Thanksgiving Horror film set to take place in the teens during its opening weekend, while Searchlight’s Taika Waititi comedy The next target wins looks at single-digit numbers. More on this in AM.