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BREAKING… Huge online movie ticket seller Fandango Wednesday began advance sales for Lionsgate’s upcoming thriller The Hunger 
Games. And already it’s exclipsing Twilight Saga: Eclipse as Fandango’s biggest first day advance ticket-seller in its 12-year company history. Hundreds of Hunger showtimes are already sold out for the March 23 opening. Even though the film doesn’t open for another month, the first-day ticket sales yesterday broke the previous first day advance ticket-seller record held by Eclipse on May 14, 2010. ”The Hunger Games is off to a fantastic start,” Rick Butler, EVP/General Manager of Fandango said in today’s statement. “Yesterday we saw the biggest first day advance ticketing sales in our company’s nearly 12-year history – which is especially impressive for a March release and a non-sequel.” Fandango says theater owners are continuing to add new showtimes. Looks like Lionsgate has a humongous hit on its hands, although the box office could always prove frontloaded because of the advance ticket sales.
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The World Will be Watching on March 23.
John Carter will earn more than the Hunger Games
Doubtful.
In sympathy, yeah.
HA! You obviously haven’t been reading the projections for John Carter.. it’s going to be a disaster for Disney.
I want what you’re smokin’, you Disney shill. John Carter is this generation’s Ishtar, and this year’s Mars Needs Moms.
I will be there opening night at midnight. I loved the trilogy and I am eagerly anticipating the film. I hope it ends up being a lot more Harry Potter and a lot less Twilight, in terms of quality. The Hunger Games is a fantastic property.
When did the movie theatre become legit theatre? Who plans a movie night one month in advance?
No movie is so anticipated to deserve this kind of advance hype. This is the type of marketing crap that only serves to increase audience disappointment and hurt a movie’s reviews.
As for me, I can wait until the hype dies down. I’m not about to be sucked in by the Hollyweird marketing machine to drop dollars for a movie whose release is still a month away. I don’t think I’d want to be seeing the movie with those fanatics, anyway.
You do know that you are on a Hollywood trade website, right? If you have it in for Hollyweird, as you call it, you sure love the wrong website.
I have to say I find this a very odd comment. People have been plannng trips to the cinema in advance for years. It has litttle or nothing ot do with hype and everything to do with what you wnat to see.
I’ve been a fan of the Avengers since I was about 9 years old. The minute I knew there was likely to be a film made about the I knew exactly what I’d be doing the night it opened, even if I didn’t know when that night was. It didn’t need “hype” just the knowledge they were making a film I wanted to see, for a long time. Same thing with Lord of The Rings. Seriously people were planning (even if only subconsciously) to see the next Rings film 10 seconds after the one they had just watched finished. If you could have sold tickets for Christmas 202 right after the first Rings film finished you’d have made a fortune.
Surely you have a book that you love, or a director that you know you will go to see whatever their work is as soon as possible?
A month away is closer than you think. This movie has been building excitement for months and months. And if someone leaves a theater disappointed, it won’t be the marketing’s fault. No one is forcing anyone to buy a ticket, and no one is being coerced into liking something before they’ve seen it.
Welcome to the 21st Century. There’s this thing called the Internet that makes it easy for people to buy movie tickets in advance. Sometimes really far in advance if a movie an eagerly awaited one.
ThE Hunger Games will here but it make more internationally
I agree with cynical. I’m not going to go because of all the hype and hysteria Lionsgate is whipping up. That would be playing right into their hands. I am not some sheep they can just herd into pasture before shearing my hairy back.
When I go, it will be for my own reasons, on MY terms. They’ll get my money, but they won’t get the satisfaction of knowing they tricked me into it with their shiny objects or pretenses at legit theatre.
The big difference with Twilight is that Hunger Games is actually a very good book.
I find it interesting that The Hunger Games fans alway feel the need to slam Twilight to get their point across. If you love the books, that’s fantastic. You don’t like Twilight, that’s cool too. But why the need to hate on one to make the other look better? But then I guess it’s that YA mentality. But really, there is definitely room for both to be successful. Just ask Harry Potter which survived just fine even after Twilight started doing well. It’s nice to see more films doing well at the box offce.
Oh my god. It’s not like the TWILIGHTERS didn’t diss HARRY POTTER.
They did it, so even IF some Hunger Games fans do it, it’s because of all this HYPE AND COMPARISON. It happened with HP and TWILIGHT so of course it’s going to happen now. They don’t HAVE to diss Twilight to make HG better; it already IS.
It’s deserved, trailer was great, film looks great. Props to Lionsgate for moving from Saw schlock into good stuff.
I should have bought LGF, it was $6-$7 during the Icahn days, now it has doubled… Looks like Icahn should be pissed too.
The good thing is the first book is pretty much loved across the board. But the second and third entries in the series provoke a much more mixed reaction, and that could hurt future installments.
Not at all. Breaking Dawn is the least liked Twilight book. Doesn’t effect it.
Hey, at least Hunger Games has average actors and Jennifer Lawrence. Have you seen her in Winter’s Bone? Incredible.
This trailer ran before breaking dawn, and never have I seen, heard or smelled a more underwhelmed reception. Plus, Lawrence looked bloated in the face, I think they’ve corrected that in subsequent trailers. But point is, there was no excitement. Every other trailer before the film started got a better reception. That’s when I thought, uh oh, this movie is in trouble. The fandango news? I tend to go with the theory that it’s ‘front loaded,’ no way do I even hear people in the streets anxious to see this…they just aren’t, despite the manufactured hype.
a movie where the lead character is a girl named “Katniss Everdeen” ?
That right there is the first sign of what a piece of sewer bilge this movie is. female young adult fiction – dumbing down the average intelligence of girls on a daily basis.
Wow, I have never seen so much ignorance being spewed by another human. Just, wow, who bred you? I pity them.
That really is an extraordinarily bitter and dumb-witted comment.
I don’t get why people go to specific websites just to talk negatively about the story. If you know you don’t like the hunger games amd prefer twilight then why would you read an article that talks about the hunger games BEATING twilight in first day advanced ticket sales. I don’t see why twilight fans have to slam the hunger games just because it is successful. To me it kinda looks like twilight fans might be worrying because they know THG is really popular and it looks like THG might be more successful than twilight. The actors of these movies are not slamming each other and neither are the studios so why do the fans have to. If you like THG then support that, if you like twilight then support that, and don’t slam the other. There is room for both movies to be successful. Personally i like both stories (althought I love the hunger games more and obsess over it) and I believe both deserve the succes they have. Anyways whether people like it or not THG is going to be an amazing movie, and I can’t wait to watch it!!!!!!!!!!!!! March 23, THE WORLD WILL BE WATCHING.
Harry Potter always made more than Twilight, but Twilight held the ticket record? This means nothing than. And of course fans are going to flock to buying tickets. It was only ONE day advanced sales. This movie seems way over-hyped, and the previews look terrible.