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EXCLUSIVE: I’ve just learned that The Hunger Games will receive the largest release in the history of Lionsgate with an opening weekend North American count of 4,137 locations. The studio will have just under 10,000 prints playing throughout the U.S. and Canada starting Friday, and that number keeps going up daily. Right now, that only puts The Hunger Games at #12 on the all-time list of widest openings at the box office. No. 1 is June 2010′s The Twilight Saga: Eclipse which released into 4,468 theaters. More than 75% of the prints are in digital, with 268 IMAX theatres across North America playing the hotly anticipated pic. Online pre-sales of tickets continue to amaze, and business for Friday 12:01 AM midnight shows is expected to be phenomenal. Exactly how much the studio can gross for the first weekend depends on how many screenings each theater can pack into 72 hours by finding enough staff willing to work the extra hours and keep the pic running continuously. The pic also opens worldwide day-and-date except for a handful of markets (which include Spain, Italy, South Africa, Japan, South Korea, Venezuela) on an estimated 7,700 prints.
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Cha-CHING!!
This movie will SLAY and we will all DEAL.
HUNGER GAMES runs 142 minutes, the last TWILIGHT installment ran only 117 minutes, should be interesting to see how this plays out in terms of opening weekend cume.
Not to be cruel…. but they can always steal John Carter’s screens. It’s not like anyone will notice or care.
It has seemingly sold all of John Carter’s IMAX screens (JC is much more IMAX-friendly than this. I saw it on Monday and with lots of close-ups and weak CGI, there is no point in seeing this in IMAX, although all of the IMAX times near me on Friday are already sold out so I’m sure the format surcharges will help HUNGER’s grosses by at least $10M).
It will be interesting to see if this is really going to be a one-week exclusive on IMAX like advertised giving next weekend’s WRATH OF THE TITANS seems to be tracking weak. If I was a theater-owner I’d rather keep HUNGER GAMES playing a second week than Titans. Does anyone know if IMAX dictates that they must change the film or if it is the theaters decision???
How badly do Hailee Steinfeld and Abigail Breslin feel right now? At least they were on the shortlist, I guess. Thousands of other actresses didn’t even get that far.
I dont know…it can be a doubl edged sword getting a role in a series like this…forever tagged as The hunger games girl and struglling to get much credibility or diverse roles afterwards. Sure she’ll make a heap of money but at the end of the dayKristen Stewart will forever be “that chick from twilight’ nad lawrence will likely be the same. On a side note dont know why hemsworth is getting a ton of publicity – he’s barely in the first and second books at all and somehow is getting top billing.
Except that Jennifer Lawrence already has an Oscar nomination for a drama. Otherwise…sure.
Considering that Jennifer is an Oscar nominated actress and a staple at the Sundance film festival her career is poised for great success. Btw Kristen Stewart is already breaking out of her twilight image with films like Snow White which looks great
Hemsworth = marketing. Welcome to the biz!
Except if your name is Carl Ichan.
With all the digital theaters now I wonder if “prints” is the expense it used to be. Used to be about 4k for a print like this? 4000 prints would be about 16 million in print costs. Worth it regardless, for a movie like this, but now that so many theaters are digital, are the print costs more like 2 million?
35mm prints cost around $1k these days, and VPF (which is the virtual print fee, the cost to a distributor for a digital print that’s there to subsidize the cost of a theater’s equipment) is very slightly less, around $900 with some reductions from there based on multiple screens. So no, your figures are off.