Starvation Video games prequel heads for $50 million opening weekend

“Snow lands on prime.”

It is the mantra of the primary character Coriolanus Snow within the upcoming “Starvation Video games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” and the hope of its distributor Lionsgate.

The prequel to the $3 billion Starvation Video games franchise, primarily based on the 2020 novel of the identical identify by writer Suzanne Collins, is a standalone movie set some 60 years earlier than Katniss Everdeen volunteers as tribute. It debuts in theaters this weekend.

“Ballad” is headed for a strong opening, doubtless hauling in between $42 million and $55 million, based on field workplace analysts, as the primary new entry within the Starvation Video games saga since 2015.

“It is an attention-grabbing place for the Starvation Video games prequel as a result of the expectation has abruptly grow to be that it has an opportunity to open on par with ‘The Marvels,’ give or take, after the latter movie lived all the way down to bearish forecasts,” stated Shawn Robbins, chief analyst at BoxOffice.com.

Disney and Marvel Studios’ “The Marvels” considerably underperformed expectations when it debuted in theaters earlier this month. The movie tallied $46.1 million domestically over its debut weekend, the bottom within the 30-plus-film franchise’s historical past. The movie had initially been slated to snag between $75 million and $80 million, however these expectations shrank to $60 million and $65 million simply forward of its opening.

“There has at all times been a sure magic surrounding the Starvation Video games franchise,” stated Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore. “This newest installment appears to be like to take the goodwill generated by the unique movies within the collection and parlay that into what guarantees to be strong $50 [million] plus debut for this intriguing and thrilling origin story.”

The movie facilities on a younger Coriolanus Snow, a person destined to be president of Panem, the fictional nation primarily based on the continental United States. It sheds gentle on what sparked his rise to grow to be the tyrannical ruler seen in later Starvation Video games tales.

Whereas field workplace analysts see a $50 million opening as a optimistic — given Hollywood’s current writers and actors strikes and a change in shopper moviegoing habits — “Ballad” will open considerably decrease than its predecessors. Every of the opposite 4 movies within the Starvation Video games franchise debuted with greater than $100 million in ticket gross sales on the home field workplace.

There may be some trepidation from field workplace analysts on whether or not “Ballad” will be capable of recapture the audiences that got here out almost a decade in the past for earlier installments.

“We’re speaking a few prequel that does not have the star energy its predecessors did with Jennifer Lawrence,” Robbins stated. “The fan base is just a little bit older now, the [young adult] style is past its peak of recognition greater than a decade in the past.”

Prequels are usually difficult to market outdoors the established core fan base, Robbins stated.

“The largest variable here’s what portion of immediately’s younger feminine viewers this new Starvation Video games story can usher in with an all new forged,” he stated.

To this point, the movie has a 61% rating on evaluate aggregator Rotten Tomatoes from 90 opinions, with critics asserting that the excellent forged and thrilling story make the movie a worthy return to the Starvation Video games universe. Some, nevertheless, discovered the pacing of the movie too rushed. The screenplay is kind of devoted to Collins’ novel, which has greater than 500 pages.

The movie can also be a standalone, with no promise for future installments. Producers of the movie franchise have stated they don’t plan on returning to Panem except Collins writes one other e-book.

Nonetheless, “Ballad” arrives in theaters at a vital time for Lionsgate — with the corporate set to separate from Starz and on the heels of its current acquisition of Leisure One from Hasbro — and for the field workplace. It opens simply head of Disney’s animated function “Want” and AppleTV+’s “Napoleon,” that are due out subsequent week on Thanksgiving.

“This can be a table-setting weekend that theaters and studios undoubtedly want after one other feast-or-famine fall season impacted by launch delays and business strikes, each of which is able to proceed to be felt by means of the vacation season,” stated Robbins.

Disclosure: Comcast is the mother or father firm of NBCUniversal and CNBC. NBCUniversal owns Rotten Tomatoes.