i would join such a club now.

My guess is people must not really have liked Catching Fire. And they didn't like MJ1 even more. This drop would make sense if the films before it really were just not liked.

Our matinees were horrendous. Our biggest crowd was 41 people, before that it was 24. It was dead as hell besides a random 1:30 showing of I Love the Coopers selling out. I ended up sending nearly all of my employees home and we still were fucked on labor.

That being said, our 7:30 show is 60% full already in our biggest auditorium and when I left, business was picking up a bit.

Also, The Night Before is doing awful. There were two empty shows this afternoon. Hopefully that picks up tonight as well... The Secret in Our Eyes was doing well, but that is a movie that would do well here regardless, so the attendance may be a bit skewed.

In easily, just the Thursday pre-midnight showings alone should be $60m+, double that for opening day it should easily beat Mockingjay.

Boy has pop culture changed since 2012! Everything that was big has seemingly run its course, even, Hillary Clinton.

Those are too early but yeah after the previews numbers that was expected. MJ1 made $55m with $17m previews so I think this will still cross $50m with the estimates.

CF killed my interest in the series.

It is just down to the fact that The Hunger Games is the, what, third YA franchise now? They were all the rage before, but people are caring less and less, and/or growing out of it. It's YA franchise fatigue.

I would say second. Harry Potter is not your traditional YA franchise.

Man, I really wouldn't have expected this to open lower than Part 1. But I definitely haven't felt the hype since CF.

I think it mainly has to do with general audiences not liking Mockingjay (the book) anywhere near as much as the first 2. I don't think that any other major YA movie adaptation had to deal with a book that so many were indifferent to or didn't care for. HP I'm pretty sure didn't have that problem, and Twilight books were all crap (from what I've heard) but their target audience didn't care and were on board with them from the beginning.

So then they take audiences least favorite book and split it into two movies, without any reason to actually do so besides making more money?? I think non-devoted fans either saw through it or just weren't able to get excited enough to see it in theaters.

No matter what, it's still a huge success and combined they are clearly going to make more money than one Mockingjay film alone would make, so I guess LGF wins anyways.

As a side note, I really hope this has better legs than MJ1, just so we can say it had better legs with each entry, which completely goes against everything we've learned from watching box office.

Actually, forget that angle. It's just because there are too many YA films being released. Quite simply. Everything is YA these days, and people are sick of it. It's a Hollywood tradition to overkill everything, and this is what they are doing with YA films. They did it with 3D. They did it with sword and sandal epics. They did it with superhero films. They did it with first-quarter Liam Neeson actioners. Now it's YA adaptation's turn.

Spotlight is #4 on movietickets.com with 3%, ahead of The Peanuts Movie. That's pretty darn impressive. I'll be curious to see how it holds.

As for Mockingjay, this is the third Hunger Games movie in a row to have people Chicken Littling its opening day number, so I'll hold off on panic. This franchise has always behaved a bit oddly.

Latest DHD update still has MJ2 at 47m. HUGE OD drop despite previews holding ok relative to MJ1.

That's right. The first one exploded among the general public. I mean it did TDK numbers OW for the first film which is insane. It was always going to struggle to keep all entries at that same level of performance.

Also to Magnus' comment about gaps between sequels - 2 years would be much better. Has any franchise outside of LOTR thrived on annual releases? I can't think if any.

Saw for the first few years.

Because most don't keep it to three films. They go overboard and push it to four or more (or the never-ending series like Saw etc.)

It also says $3.4M for Night Before for a $9.6M weekend and $2.5M for Secret in their Eyes for a $7.5M weekend. Who in the hell could have ever expected only a $2M between these two ? Just terrible.

HG is kinda acting like the Pirates franchise, although the first Pirates run was nothing like the first HG.

Disappointing weekend.

Twilight did it and maintained some pretty incredible consistency. For something like this I think the one-year gap works perfectly fine - the books are already out there, so most people that are interested know what happens already - it's just a matter of actually seeing it acted out. Waiting two years would honestly probably kill momentum - just look at the poor Chronicles of Narnia franchise.

The problem here is splitting the ending in two - if they had just done a single movie it probably could have matched the first two, or at least made $375+ million. But Lionsgate is still making more dough than they would have with only one movie, so they could probably care less.

If it makes over 300 mil it will have done fine. A split movie without a Hunger Games was going to take its cost

I wouldn't be surprised if the numbers go up slightly. The four 10:00pm - 11:30pm showtimes were sold out at the theater I covered tonight. I think there were a couple of other sell-outs throughout the day, but it certainly finished strong late.

Perfect post apart from the ending.

Disappointing numbers for everything pretty much. Expected for The Night Before though, which did alright. I don't know what some people were thinking with their high predictions.

Sizzling debut in limited release for Carol. I hate that I'll have to wait so long to see it. Weinstein is planning on very slowly rolling it out, which is typical for them with their Oscar hopefuls. Even ones with huge mainstream appeal like Silver Linings Playbook.

Kind of underwhelming for Spotlight but I think it will do really solid business over Thanksgiving week.