The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes is coming in at the bottom of where we were seeing it yesterday, with a $44M opening. The hope was that this Suzanne Collins prequel was bound to file $50M+. Overseas was better at $54.5M, for a $98.5M Global opening.
Saturday stateside for Songbirds & Snakes was $15M, coming off of a $19.1M Friday, -21%, with a Sunday projected of $9.9M.
There is some great word of mouth for the movie among the under-25 female crowd, which could help the pic during the Thanksgiving stretch. However, this film was frontloaded, à la any YA movie aimed at women. That said, two types of movies work over Thanksgiving: Family and PG-13 aimed at a fervent demo. Songbirds and Snakes falls into the latter category.
After The Marvels posted a franchise low for the Marvel Cinematic Universe of $46.1M, isn’t Songbirds and Snakes also a misfire? Not necessarily, and at a $100M-plus production cost, 65% of which is funded by foreign sales, with another $20M+ in German tax credits, the Lionsgate Francis Lawrence-directed movie is structured completely differently financially than the $200M The Marvels. Lionsgate has largely covered their nut and exposure in foreign territory licensing, materially participating after their partners recover their costs. Songbirds & Snakes will be profitable, with a domestic end results between $120M-$130M. Still, there didn’t seem to be any kind of urgency here on behalf of fans to reignite new life into Hunger Games.
The challenge here for Lionsgate in launching this movie all along, aside from the actors strike, is the fact that the Collins novel wasn’t a big hit like the others, hitting shelves during Covid, with 3.5M novels sold. The other factor that can’t be ignored is that Hunger Games die-hards were upset when the studio split up Mockingjay into two movies. Lawrence heard the outcry, and has his regrets.
While Lionsgate did have a SAG-AFTRA interim agreement rather late in the campaign and the strike did end, giving them close to two weeks to trot their cast out between London, Berlin, and Hollywood, there’s no question that the thespian walkout since July hurt the major beats of Songbirds & Snakes marketing campaign. Like The Marvels, this is a movie that could have had a major blast-off at San Diego Comic-Con, sans a strike.
The bigger question going forward is whether or not this is enough to keep a franchise going. By major studio standards, it is not. It’s going to be more expensive to mount a sequel. When Fantastic Beasts came out and opened to $74.4M domestic, $218.3M, we slammed it, saying that it wasn’t enough to fire off a five-film franchise. That was correct on a box office basis, and the Harry Potter spinoff only made it to three films (versus the planed five), with grosses plummeting with each installment. However, the way studios look at these movies, even with declining grosses, is that they’re a catalyst to other parts of the business, i.e. theme parks, merchandise, and the overall home sales of older movies in the franchise.
At the same time, Fantastic Beasts opened up a new box office benchmark for prequel movies (meaning openings under the $80M threshold), and what their potential could be when such titles veered from the core franchise. The first Fantastic Beasts opening stateside was 56% off from the opening of the final Harry Potter: Deathly Hallows Part 2‘s $169.1M. Songbirds & Snakes‘ start is down -57% from the last Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2‘s $102.6M opening.
“This is to be expected,” is what several distributions sources are telling me about the results here, many sensitive to the fact that Songbirds & Snakes‘ campaign was off-kilter because of actors forbidden to promote.
All of this said, by film foreign sales funding standards, the opening here for the Hunger Games prequel is alright. “If each major foreign partner fares well in their territories with the movie, they’ll definitely buy into another Hunger Games installment, no question about it,” says one foreign sales big macher.
“This isn’t so much about expanding the franchise as rebuilding it,” says the same source about Songbirds & Snakes, which arrived in theaters eight years after Mockingjay 2. The distance between Deathly Hallows 2 and Fantastic Beasts was only five years.
However, something seems off here in getting a vibrant word of mouth out to fans despite the strike. True, Spotify was a big partner in the premiere and strutting the music. But I don’t think moviegoers were aware of the sublime country song ballads, and how different this movie is from the bows and arrow action of the core franchise. Another obstacle was the fact that this was a movie as a dark, character-driven origin tale. There’s an argument to be made that these songs should have been out there for awards season consideration purposes (they’re certainly worthy) and to raise the movie’s profile significantly earlier.
However, Lionsgate didn’t want to position this movie as a musical. That was too challenging and too risky an angle in bringing back the die-hards. Lionsgate had social media gold in 3x Grammy winner Olivia Rodrigo. However, because of the record label and actors strike, they couldn’t drop her end-credits song, “Can’t Catch Me Now,” until two weeks before the movie’s release. Rodrigo also showed up at the premiere giving the three-finger Hunger Games salute (see what we captured at the premiere below). Rodrigo’s involvement in the movie was revealed in a Times Square event, timed to the tickets on sale date, and a broadcast on TikTok.
Lionsgate dropped the first trailer for Songbirds & Snakes at CinemaCon at the end of April. They also treated press to a special event, the Hunger Games Experience in Las Vegas, where 21 superfans, aka “The Gems of Panem,” were a key part of spreading word to fans as they received exclusive assets and revealed and teased drops and shared behind-the-scenes content.
Juxtapose the positioning of the music with Universal/DreamWorks Animation’s Trolls Band Together, which opened to $30.6M this past weekend, a resurrection for the brand after being challenged with its PVOD play because of the pandemic over Easter 2020. NSYNC reunited for the first time in 22 years on the MTV Video Music Awards on Sept. 12. While they couldn’t utter the words “Trolls Band Together” on the show because of the strike, they dropped their single “Better Place” from the movie days later, which propelled the second trailer for Trolls Band Together to 200M, while the first one clocked 140M.
In early October, a Trolls Band Together listening party on Roblox was visited more than 10 million times by more than 3.6 million unique players. Also, NSYNC appeared on an episode of Hot Ones a month ago. It seemed that when it came to the musical portion of Trolls Band Together, there was more in the walk-up, music-wise, than Songbirds and Snakes.
RelishMix shows that Songbirds & Snakes‘ social media universe reach actually outstripped that of Trolls Band Together, 393M to 287M across X, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. The juice of that for the prequel was in TikTok, with behind the scenes content to introducing the new cast at a Times Square event. Views on the platform surged into the billions.
Other promo partners for Songbirds & Snakes included Gibson Guitars, Urban Outfitters, Poshmark, Butter London, and 1-800-Flowers. The products & experiences team worked with ShoptheScenes.com and Walmart to create official in-world merchandise and memorabilia boxes for the ultimate Hunger Games fan, Aviator Nation, Hot Topic (where the initial release of the collection is already sold out and being restocked), and Academy Adventures (an immersive experience on Roblox that has reached 1.1 million visits).
Even with Songbirds and Snakes opening, there’s nothing wrong with feeding the franchise: The mere opening of this movie will reignite the Hunger Games library over the holiday period, as many return to the original movies either in PVOD, SVOD, etc.
Another comp here for Songbirds and Snakes is the second Divergent: Insurgent, which cost $110M and opened to $52.2M domestic, and legged out to $130.1M U.S./Canada and $297M. That sequel had an A- Cinemascore.
The CinemaScore for Songbirds & Snakes came in at B+, the lowest for the Hunger Games franchise, but not far from both Mockingjay‘s A-. However, hope prevails in other exits. On PostTrak, Songbirds & Snakes is still 4 1/2 stars, with 87% positive. Best scores come from women under 25 at 93% who were the biggest demo for the movie at 37%. The 18-24 bunch at 45%, the biggest age demo, embraced Songbirds & Snakes with a 90% grade. Women over 25 at 27% gave it an 85%. Men over 25 at 21% graded it at 81%, while men under 25 showed up at 15% with an 83% grade.
Diversity demos were 50% Caucasian, 24% Hispanic and Latino, 11% Black, and 10% Asian. Sixty-nine percent definite recommend. Hopefully, this provides a great multiple heading into Thanksgiving. Some believe that the prequel didn’t shed much, despite sharing the marquee with another girl-skewing title, Trolls Band Together. The latter is more family, and Songbirds and Snakes more adolescent.
Interesting thing about the movie is that it’s not a typical NYC and L.A. type of movie: Highest- grossing theater is the AMC Boston Commons, with $101K so far. The pic is playing best in the South and Mountain Regions. Imax and PLFs are only fueling 36% of the weekend gross, which seems low for a tentpole. North American Imax results were $4.1M, or 9% of the weekend total. The prequel will share Imax screens with Napoleon over Thanksgiving. Rotten Tomatoes upticked to 60% fresh with critics.
With an overall total of four wide releases, the fall weekend box office is showing the third-best result post Labor Day, with $116.5M after the weekend of Oct. 13-15 ($132.5M, when Taylor Swift opened) and Oct. 27-29 ($126.1M, when Five Nights at Freddy’s opened). This weekend is +16% from the pre-Thanksgiving period a year ago, which did $100.6M, led by the second weekend of Wakanda Forever, which was $66.4M.
Second place goes to Universal/DreamWorks Animation’s Trolls Band Together, which is coming up strong with a $30.6M opening after a $9.35M Friday and $12.2M Saturday.
Let’s take a moment here to reflect on what a great opening this is for Uni, DWA, and the Trolls band after the whole Trolls World Tour going PVOD noise. You’ll remember before theaters closed, Uni made the decision to go day-and-date with that movie on PVOD, which ultimately became a lone PVOD release. That didn’t hurt Trolls one bit, and audiences came back.
There’s something else that’s amazing here with Trolls Band Together: Universal fiercely dated this female-skewing movie before Disney’s Thanksgiving- skewing girl animated musical movie, Wish, which opens Wednesday to what is potentially $45M-$50M over 5-days. Is Universal out of their freakin’ minds? “No,” says one rival studio exec, “If this was seven years ago, you’d have to worry about Disney. But with their brand rusting, you don’t need to worry about them anymore.” The notion is that two animated musical movies for girls can live in the holiday box office for the next month-plus.
The opening is off 35% from the original Trolls‘ $46.5M back in 2016. The threequel debut here is heads and tails above Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, which had a $12.4M opening (that was because of the winter cold spell last year at Christmas) which mushroomed into a 15x legout to $185.5M stateside.
The Walt Dohrn-directed threequel gets an A CinemaScore, just like the first one. PostTrak is great at 85% and 67% recommend, with kids under 12 hugging Trolls 3 at 95%. Mom-leaning at 71% female, with 31% of the audience between 18-34. The largest adult quad was 35-44 years old at 27%. Under 17 was 34%. Diversity demos are 37% Latino and Hispanic, 34% Caucasian, 11% Asian, and 10% Black. Trolls 3 are ruling South Central, Midwest and West. The Marcus Majestic Brookfield, WI is leading the pack with $39K in gross (including early shows). Top 10 markets are LA, NYC, Dallas, Chicago, Houston, San Fran, Philly, DC, Toronto and Phoenix.
Beamed Domestic Distribution head Jim Orr: “Trolls Band Together is off to a dazzling start at the domestic box office.Audiences across North America are singing the praises of and along with these iconic characters that continue to mesmerize all ages.”
Third place belongs to Disney’s The Marvels, with a second Friday of $2.8M (ouch, -87%), Saturday of $4.4M, and second weekend forecast of $10.2M, -78% –the biggest second weekend drop ever for an MCU title, and a running total of $65M by EOD Sunday.
TriStar/Spyglass Media’s Thanksgiving made $3.825 million on Friday, $3.865 million on Saturday, with a Sunday figured at $2.5M at 3,204 locations. That’s $10.2M for the weekend; we’ll see if it’s third or fourth tom’w AM. B- CinemaScore, which is par for a horror movie, and 74% positive on PostTrak. That 3-day is a great start, and enough with leftovers to go around on this $15M budgeted horror pic. At 83% positive on RT, it’s the best-reviewed movie ever for filmmaker Eli Roth. Turnout is 56% guys, with 65% of the audience between 18-34 and the largest demo being 18-24 at 36%. Diversity mix was 46% Caucasian, 26% Latino and Hispanic, 16% Black, and 13% Asian/other. Thanksgiving played pretty even throughout the country, but strongest in the East. The AMC Burbank was the highest-grossing venue in the country with $20,5K through previews, Friday, and Saturday.
Searchlight’s Next Goal Wins in 7th place is running into foul poles as expected, with a $2.5M opening after $1.1M Friday. B+ CinemaScore. This is to be expected for a movie that critics turned their noses up at 41% Rotten for the Oscar-winning Jojo Rabbit filmmaker Taika Waititi. PostTrak audiences were similar to CinemaScore, with 86% positive and 65% recommend for the general audience. Men attended at 60%, with 52% between 18-34, with the biggest demo being 25-34 at 30%. Diversity demos were 55% Caucasian, 18% Latin and Hispanic, 5% Black, & 22% Asian/other. Best area for the movie, if we can say that, was the middle of the country. The Regal Winward Honolulu HI was the highest-grossing cinema in the country, with $9K so far.
Studios reported figures:
1.) Hunger Games: Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes (LG) 3,776 theaters Fri $19.1M Sat $15M Sun $9.9M 3-day $44M/Wk 1
2.) Trolls Band Together (Uni/DWA) 3,870 theaters Fri $9.35M Sat $12.2M Sun $8.97M 3-day $30.6M/Total $31.7M
3.) The Marvels (Dis) 4,030 theaters Fri $2.8M Sat $4.4M Sun $3M 3-day $10.2M (-78%) Total $65M/Wk 2
4.) Thanksgiving (Sony) 3,204 theaters, Fri $3.8M Sat $3.86M Sun $2.5M 3-day $10.2M/Wk 1
5.) Five Nights at Freddy’s (Uni) 2,829 (-865) theaters, Fri $940K Sat $1.57M Sun $990K 3-day $3.5M (-61%), Total $132.6M/Wk 4
6.) The Holdovers (Foc) 1478 (+700) theaters Fri $800K Sat $1.1M Sun $780K/3-day $2.7M (-16%), Total $8.35M/Wk 4
7.) Next Goal Wins (Sea) 2,240 theaters Fri $1.1M Sat $822K Sun $578K 3-day $2.5M/Wk 1
8.) Taylor Swift: Eras Tour (AMC) 1,573 (-1275) theaters, Fri $655K Sat $1M Sun $745K 3-day $2.4M (-61%)/Total $175.3M/ Wk 6
9.) Priscilla (A24) 1,802 (-559) theaters, Fri $731K Sat $922K Sun $673K 3-day $2.32M (-50%), Total $16.98M/Wk 4
10.) Killers of the Flower Moon (Apple/Par) 1,714 (-1,643) theaters Fri $530K Sat $840K Sun $550K 3-day $1.92M (-58%)/Total $63.5M/Wk 5