The Hunger Games Tops The Box Office, But Lionsgate Isn't Partying Like It's 2012

Lionsgate was looking to revive one of its biggest franchises ever as "The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes" hit theaters over the weekend. While the studio will probably get to call this one a win when all's said and done, it's not going to be a party like it was in 2012 when the first film became an unexpected global smash. Instead, the studio is going to have to settle for a one-and-done prequel that will turn a relatively modest profit. Still a win, but not a home run worthy of reigniting the series beyond this film.

"Songbirds & Snakes" debuted atop the box office charts over the weekend with an estimated $44 million domestic haul, per The Numbers. That was, admittedly, on the lower end of projections but it was more than enough to best the steep competition. "Trolls Band Together" ($30.6 million), Eli Roth's slasher "Thanksgiving" ($10.3 million), and Taika Waititi's "Next Goal Wins" ($2.5 million) all opened this weekend as well, with Marvel Studios' "The Marvels" ($10.2 million) in its second weekend. That movie fell off a cliff though, which certainly helped Lionsgate's case.

Internationally, "The Hunger Games" prequel took in an additional $54.5 million, giving it a global total of $98.5 million. Against a $100 million production budget (before marketing), that's not bad. It's still by far the lowest opening of any film in the franchise, with "Mockingjay Part 2" ($102 million) holding the previous record. That speaks volumes about just how successful this series had been up to this point, and why Lionsgate felt it was worth making the prequel, which is based on author Suzanne Collins' 2020 book of the same name. Fortunately, it was also the least expensive movie in the franchise aside from the first entry, which cost $80 million to make. The budgets ballooned after that.

Tom Blyth ("The Gilded Age") and Rachel Zegler ("West Side Story") lead the cast for the film, with Francis Lawrence returning to the director's chair. He previously helmed three entries in the series. The new film centers on an 18-year-old Coriolanus Snow, who is the last hope for his fading lineage. As the 10th annual Hunger Games are coming up, Snow is assigned to mentor Lucy Gray Baird, a tribute from impoverished District 12. The film has been met with a somewhat mixed reaction (read our review here), as it currently sits at 62% on Rotten Tomatoes, with a solid 91% audience score.

What remains to be seen is how well the film can hold in the coming weeks, particularly over the Thanksgiving holiday as Disney's "Wish" and Ridley Scott's "Napoleon" are also opening this week. The previous four "Hunger Games" movies made a combined $2.95 billion worldwide at the peak of Hollywood's YA craze. The first film opened to a massive $152 million en route to $678 million worldwide. Admittedly, we're well beyond that craze and the numbers from this past weekend speak to that. Still, if word of mouth from moviegoers is good, this one could still leg out over the holidays.

Lionsgate has spent most of the year turning to franchises that have done well for them in the past. That has largely gone well, with films like "John Wick: Chapter 4" and "Saw X" doing big business at the box office. The lone exception has been "Expend4bles," which is easily one of the biggest bombs of the year thus far having earned just $51 million globally against a $100 million budget. "Songbirds & Snakes" falls squarely in the middle in the early going. It's certainly not great, but essentially matching your production budget on opening weekend worldwide is by no means bad. It's just not what the studio had its sights set on.

"The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes" is in theaters now.