"The Hunger Games" will surely have high ratings this year.
Here’s the projection so far [numbers from Deadline]:
1. The Hunger Games (Lionsgate) NEW [4,137 Theaters] PG13-rated
Friday $68.2M, Saturday $50.0M, Weekend $150.0M
2. 21 Jump Street (Sony) Week 2 [3,121 Theaters] R-rated
Weekend $21.0M (-43%), Cume $70M
3. Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax 3D (Universal) Week 4 [3,677 Theaters] PG-rated
Weekend $14.0M, Cume $176.7M
4. John Carter 3D (Disney) Week 3 [3,212 Theaters) PG13-rated
Weekend $5.3M, Cume $62.6M
5. Act Of Valor (Relativity) Week 5 [2,219 Theaters] R-rated
Weekend $2.2M, Cume $65.9M
Here are some “Hunger Games” opening facts:
- It’s the 4th all-time biggest opening three-day weekend, behind 2008?s The Dark Knight but beating all the Twilight Saga films.
- It’s the highest non-sequel opening weekend ever.
- The highest March opening ever.
- For comparison’s sake: The Twilight Saga: New Moon debuted to $142.8M in November 2009, and The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 opened to $138.1M.
- Overall audiences are giving it an A Cinemascore, with under 18 audience members giving it an A+ (then again, enthusiastic under 18 audience members also would give an A+ to any movie they could go to with their friends and eat popcorn and candy.)
- The film scored 87% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes
So there you go. Right now, Lionsgate executives are busy trying to figure out how to turn the other two books in the trilogy, “Catching Fire” and “Mockingjay” into four movies…
The rest of the top five, well, there’s not much to say. “21 Jump Street” hung on reasonably well. We should give notice to “October Baby,” a faith based film targeted at Christian audiences, that had a great $4522 per screen average from 398 theaters for $1.8 million. Hey, sometimes it’s better to have a tightly focused niche than to try to please everyone.
