‘The Starvation Games: The Ballad Of Songbirds & Snakes’ Begins With Thursday Previews Round $6M – Field Recount of business

November 16, 2023 10:21pm

EXCLUSIVE: Lionsgate‘s prequel The Starvation Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes is taking a watch at a Thursday evening between $5.75M-$6M after showtimes that started at 3PM.

But again, these numbers aren’t from the studio and shall we leer a moderately varied consequence by morning. Whereas some will be rapidly to shout that Marvel Studios’ misfire ultimate weekend, The Marvels, started its weekend spin with a Thursday evening of $6.6M which resulted in the bottom opening ever for a Disney MCU title at $47M, present that Songbirds & Snakes worth half the worth of The Marvels‘ $200M at $100M. Moreover, Lionsgate always covers their menace on a huge title with a bulk of international gross sales.

Projections heading into the weekend were at $50M+ stateside, $100M+ worldwide. We’ll leer where this lands. Fraction of the uphill battle for the movie is that it’s a original solid sans franchise giant title Jennifer Lawrence, and one persona to crossover from the core franchise, that being Coriolanus Snow. The same to that first movie when Lawrence wasn’t a marquee title, Lionsgate is rolling the dice on the Suzanne Collins impress’s relaunch on West Facet Chronicle actress Rachel Zegler as fiery tribute Lucy Gray Baird and even brisker-face, UK actor Tom Blyth taking half in Snow.

Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes‘ preview evening isn’t that some distance from Rapid & Furious spinoff Hobbs & Shaw‘s $5.8M (7PM showtimes initiate) which went on to a $60M opening; this despite the actual fact that movie became extremely male-leaning to Starvation Games‘ female crowd. One other comp that’s being primitive is Amazon/MGM’s Creed III which did $5.4M in its Thursday evening preview and yielded a $58.3M 3-day. Nearer to the female demo is Conjuring spinoff The Nun which minted a $5.4M Thursday and $fifty three.8M 3-day with women turning out at 49% per CinemaScore over its weekend.

Showcase, Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes became never going to submit a preview in the vicinity of the final observe Starvation Games: Mockingjay Fraction 2 which came out in November 2015 and did a $16M Thursday evening for the bottom home opening in the Collins franchise of $102.7M. Nor became Songbirds & Snakes lag to emulate Harry Potter 2016 spinoff Fantastic Beasts and The attach to Get Them which noticed a Thursday evening of $8.75M and 3-day of $74.4M U.S./Canada. In actuality, Starvation Games‘ fanbase isn’t as sizable as Harry Potter‘s. (Fantastic Beasts skewed 55% female to Mockingjay 2‘s 60% female, with a majority of Potter followers older with 65% over 25 vs. Mockingjay 2‘s 50/50 ruin up for the below/over 25 crowd).

Fraction of the problem right here for Lionsgate in getting audiences out to the prequel is that Starvation Games followers weren’t fully conscious there became a brand contemporary unusual by Collins: It became released at some level of the heart of Covid in Would possibly 2020 finest seeing 500K gross sales in its first week per NPD BookScan when bookstores were closed. That gross sales figure in the waste rose to three.5M copies sold.

Whereas critics numbering 112 on Negative Tomatoes are giving Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes the bottom ranking in the franchise at 64% original, the sequence has in most cases been critic proof, and has held quite neatly at some level of the vacation season. Mockingjay 2 collected $198.5M in its first ten days of originate on anecdote of of the Thanksgiving day stretch.

Social media analytics firm RelishMix says that social media convo on Songbirds & Snakes “is running blended-leaning-clear with snarky Gen Z and younger contemporary Millennial followers whistling their praises for the most contemporary entry to the franchise. Many are enamored by the nostalgia the franchise brings back from their childhoods: ’14-yr-broken-down me is so chuffed, and 25-yr-broken-down me is sobbing.’ Others sing, ‘Query, I in actuality contain absolutely no concept what this guide is about, but when I noticed that bowing pose, it’s love seeing Katniss again. This movie will heal trauma from my childhood.’”

Other preview figures we’ve heard about, but Universal hasn’t weighed in on, is DreamWorks Animation’s Trolls Band Together with round $2M off showtimes that started at 2PM. That threequel is taking a watch at a high $20M-low $30M initiate. The movie furthermore has the bottom RT ranking in the franchise with critics at 62% original. If that preview figure is lawful, it’s heads and hair above Trolls‘ $900K in Thursday previews, and increased than the Tuesday evening previews of Illumination/Universal’s Divulge at $1.7M.

TriStar and Spyglass Media contain Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving bother movie which have to make in the children in its opening weekend whereas Searchlight’s Taika Waititi comedy Next Diagram Wins is taking a watch at single digits. Extra on those in the AM.

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