With a global bow topping $100 million, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes topped the box office last weekend. While that’s comparatively welcome news in a year that saw Marvel Studios suffer its worst opening ever with The Marvels and other studios endured similar disappointing returns, unless its fortunes improve in the coming days and weeks, The Hunger Games prequel unfortunately looks like another likely failed franchise relaunch in 2023.
Rachel Zegler stars in “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes”
This isn’t said to be cold or to judge art by dollars and cents. Rather, film is both an art form as well as a business, and part of my job in reporting about this industry is to assess the business side of it. Talking bluntly about the financial aspects is not in any way a commentary on the artistic quality of movies, and whether we like or dislike a movie doesn’t alter the reality of its theatrical performance — these things do matter, however much we may wish they didn’t, or however much many people speak as if they don’t and act resentful toward those of us who do out of necessity analyze the box office and what it means.
I also know it’s popular these days to use selective math when talking about box office — insisting a film already covered its expenses through pre-sales and product placement, and thus box office is less important, while out the other side of our mouths claiming a film is a failure without any accounting for similar offsets to costs.
But discussing box office is its own context sometimes, and a film is either popular or not, it either galvanizes audiences or it doesn’t. We can note things are relative, and often do, but let’s also allow for the business discussion of whether theatrical is performing where it needs to for launching and establishing these franchises.
With a $100 million opening, it’s probable we’ll see a final global box office cume in the realm of anywhere from $250 million on the low end to perhaps $450 million on the high end. That might appear fine when compared against a $100 million budget and reduced marketing expenses, on top of already covering investments up front with the previously mentioned pre-sales and other dealings.
However, it’s “fine” in a context where theatrical release and box office are no longer considered franchise drivers or as important in terms of primacy in the film business. The math demonstrating how this turns out to be financially profitable in the broader brand sense with merchandising and pre-sales etc is all well and good, but what does it mean for theatrical if our box office discussions are turning into this degree of qualifications and sidebars about why the box office numbers aren’t really so significant anyway, and why lower performance is fine because of how business and investments work.
Business and investments should work a lot better when you’re dealing with a brand this big, with this much potential, and with this much at stake. Is our idea of Hollywood success to be measured in how much studios can cover bets on the front end and reduce the relevance of box office in demonstrating sustainable storytelling potential rather than “can we structure this in a way that as long as it does average or even mediocre by franchise standards, it’s motivation to keep making more?”
I think this approach is a big mistake, and a self-defeating way to look at franchise building. I’m not remotely opposed to keeping costs lower and covering bases, mind you. What I’m objecting to is the assertion that those facts mean box office performance therefore doesn’t matter as much, or at least our framing of the outcome will be relative and matter less, rather than noting this performance wouldn’t normally be considered a good start to a new trilogy following up on the previous blockbuster series of films.” The theatrical marketplace still has certain standards and measures, and I think we need to try to examine films from all of these perspectives, not just whichever is convenient to our preferences.
If the hope was to maintain The Hunger Games as a major franchise player, it didn’t work. $100 million worldwide isn’t a sign of much audience interest in this particular approach, or in what they’ve seen from the film in the lead-up to release. Even with strong holds, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes will likely struggle to reach $400 million. A more probably outcome is closer to $350 million, and that’s assuming the film doesn’t suffer a disastrous collapse like The Marvels unfortunately faced on its sophomore weekend.
With Disney’s animated family film Wish hitting theaters this weekend alongside Apple’s
AAPL
It’s possible that The Hunger Games prequels are partially hamstrung by a plot that centers the future evil fascist dictator as the main character, and presents him as a romantic lead with a sympathetic arc. It’s genuinely difficult for a lot of people to watch a film like that, or to even choose to buy a ticket to one, if we are being blunt.
That so much of the marketing drove home the point he’s a blue-eyed blond-haired pale white Hitler-Youth equivalent, and that his romantic interest is a woman of color who faces persecution and (the trailers strongly hint) violent death at the hands of his fascist party, probably turned off a notable segment of the potential audience.
I’d also say that considering this is about the events leading to the collapse of society and the creation of the Hunger Games, and the rise of the dictatorship, the trailers look surprisingly devoid of much of that sort of exciting story elements and action. A film about the collapse of our modern civilization and civil war that overlaps a rising dictatorship’s creation of “bread and circuses” to distract the survivors as well as unite them in submission with a show of brutal force and sacrifice.
It might’ve been an easier sell if she was the main character, and her love interest was one of the good guys fighting against the rising dictatorship and trying to help people survive the societal collapse, with Snow as a villainous rival would-be “suitor” who reacts to her rejection by putting her into the first Hunger Games. I know some of this timing gets off because it’s during the 10th Hunger Games and society is already divided and so on, but go back further and retcon his age or whatever is necessary.
Or maybe that wouldn’t make any difference, perhaps the novelty wore off the premise, or perhaps audiences aren’t ready for the next big movie yet. It’s admittedly very easy to sit here and speculate with 20/20 hindsight. Then again, I said all of this before the movie released, and I think unless we see big weekday numbers and a sizable hold next weekend, my points will prove relevant to the film’s performance.
Context does matter, of course, so the fact The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes’ budget is relatively low and was mostly covered pre-release (aside from perhaps $15-20 million) means it’ll probably wind up profitable enough to encourage additional films in the series, and even if they all perform at this far lower level of engagement than the original trilogy, the math adds up to positive revenue streams.
Likewise, Captain America: The First Avenger for comparison did $370 million off a $140 million budget, and the context there was that Marvel Studios treated their entire Phase One slate as proof of concept investment, so no one film had to perform at a specific level and it was treated as one big world-building investment. And so on, to the point that yes offsetting costs and recognizing the heavy lifting of launching a franchise has different standards of success.
Different standards of success, however, come into play here precisely because The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes isn’t a franchise launch, it’s a franchise continuation. More than that, it’s a blockbuster franchise continuation with potential to be a new trilogy capable of generating more than $1 billion in box office alone.
That’s the difference between a film series that grosses enough to justify continued production because it’s a complex investment scenario that relies less on popularity, versus a film series that captures the social zeitgeist and blows everyone away. The latter is what The Hunger Games once was, and what it could and should be again. That’s the promise of the premise, that’s the potential of this prequel franchise.
So these complaints and critiques are from a place of love, because I’m a fan of this series. I hope to see it achieve that promise, because that’s where it will soar again.
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/markhughes/2023/11/22/the-hunger-games-prequel-is-another-failed-franchise-relaunch-in-2023/