George Lucas and Steven Spielberg have already cautioned about an industry “implosion” that may occur as projects get more expensive and thus riskier, while Steven Soderbergh has also sounded the alarm on filmmaking driven purely by profit margin. But if you need any more evidence about how important the almighty dollar is becoming when it comes to movie-making, here’s a little morsel to contemplate this weekend.
Even though it’s still two months away from hitting theaters, money is already being counted for the mega-sequel “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.” Alan Gould of investment group Evercore has peered into his crystal ball and predicted a massive $950 million haul for ‘Catching Fire,’ with the movie projected to make $375 million domestically (which would actually be less than what the first “The Hunger Games” did) with $575 million more coming worldwide (clearly, they’re banking on business abroad). Should his guesstimates come true, this would certainly be a leap in profits for the franchise. In short, it would mark a roughly 35% jump in ticket sales between the first and second movie, and of course, nip at the heels of a being a billion-earner.
But if it doesn’t make $950 million… will ‘Catching Fire’ be perceived as a failure? A silly question, certainly, but that’s the territory we’re in these days. Studios and the banks who help finance their pictures are increasingly looking for bigger ROI, while countless licensers, book publishers and more also all have stakes in keeping a tentpole as huge as possible. Of course, there is something a bit twisted about already wondering how many zeroes a movie will have months before it even opens.
We’ll see if Alan Gould has some explaining to do when “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire” arrives on November 22nd. But do you think any of “The Hunger Games” sequels will reach the billion dollar peak?
The grandfather by Don fabio
The Grandfather, Don Pacio Luciano, a reasonable, honourable man of integrity had sought justice after the deadly attacks on his family by suspected members of the notorious Sicilian Cosa Nostra. This is an outstanding story of love, honour, vengeance and astonishing revelation of the secret operations……
]
Well, when cinematic tosh like Avengers and Avatar are the highest grossing films, can we be surprised?
Since only 4.5% of the world population lives in the USA, it would be sweet if people could stop being surprised when a movie grosses more internationally than domestically.
Very true Teddy, it is astonishing and bizarre how an unwatchable movie like "The Hunger Games" can make over $400 million in North America alone, the sheer and utter stupidity of the American movie going public never ceases to amaze me.
M, foreign audiences didn`t fall for "The Hunger Games" bull-shit the way American audiences did (just like they didn`t fall for that "Dark Knight" bull-shit either) because they realised very quickly that both those movies were unwatchable horse-shit.
Huh? The first one grossed far more domestically. I just checked on Box Office Mojo and it grossed around $400 million domestic and $280 million foreign. To reverse that and then assume that the foreign gross will be twice as much as the domestic seems strange. Is there something I'm missing? If I remember correctly, the novels (and the movies too) were somewhat criticized in several foreign countries because of the subject matter.
Dont we all ! ! !.
I desperately want to perform literally every concievable and possible sex-act in the known universe on Jennifer Lawrence.
The second book is by far the best one and keeping in mind the popularity of Jennifer Lawrence + the growing fanbase for these movies/books I can see it making the predicted amount. I also think that Catching fire will make the most money out of all the movies.
All this revenue over shitty movies.
What about the premium for IMAX? Has that been factored in? The arena scenes were shot in IMAX and no doubt will add to the experience I'll certainly be watching in IMAX.
Shows how, if you say something is good (or bad) often enough, people will believe it. The first film (aside from JL's performance) and the remaining books are/were, truly shoddy works.
Absolutely funny to mention Steven Soderbergh with this particular franchise seeing as he helped shoot second unit material on the first Hunger Games film.