As the release date for The Hunger Games gets closer, critical mass is growing in terms of box office expectations and fan anticipation, the latter of which is especially off the charts.
When a movie’s got this much momentum, it doesn’t need a ton of publicity, but of course there’s a ton of press reports coming through everywhere in advance of the movie, especially about its box office
potential.
The Hollywood Reporter is now confirming Hunger Games is on target for a bigger opening than Twilight’s Breaking Dawn, which could put the film’s opening weekend in the neighborhood of a $100 – 120 million taken.
As a studio executive told The Reporter, “Numbers don’t get much higher than this. Hunger Games is tracking like a sequel, even though it isn’t a sequel. It’s three times higher than the first Twilight.”
As Collider tells us, there’s already been a press day for the film, and Jennifer Lawrence (Katniss), told reporters that what was especially challenging was her character “was already in the minds of so many different people. Normally, when you’re coming out with a movie, nobody has really send the character before. I’m playing a character that most people have already had in their mind… That’s a scary thing to go into, knowing that so many people already have pictures or an idea of what your character is.”
Nina Jacobson, who acquired the novel, also told the press it was “very important” to choose the right director for the series, Gary Ross, who also wrote Big, and wrote and directed Seabiscuit.
“I feel that with each movie, Gary adopts a different style,” she said. “He doesn’t have one look that’s the Gary Ross look… We needed somebody who would be character based and who would find the look of the movie.” (Phil Messina, the production designer for The Hunger Games, also worked on Freaks and Geeks, The Sixth Sense, and Ocean’s Eleven).
As for the violence of the story, Jacobson explained, “When I first talked to Suzanne Collins about adapting the books, we knew that we wanted it to be PG-13 because she wrote the book for readers 12 and up, and we wanted them to see the movie. On the other hand, we didn’t want to dilute or soften the material because that would really be irresponsible. The books are very intense and very demanding of the reader, and the movie should be that way too.”
