APEX Hollywood Shortlist: Team Hunger Games Makes Waves in Hollywood
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- CBS Studios, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1
If one movie based on a best-selling young adult novel is good, then, by Hollywood tentpole logic, two movies from a best-selling young adult novel should be even better, right? Well, these days, it all depends on who you ask.
Obviously, the studios are huge fans of the concept and, overall, critical reception has been split pretty evenly. But fan reaction to these so-called “placeholder” films has been mixed, at best, with many choosing to wait out the next film in the series rather than be left hanging for a year or more between instalments.
Opening with a $121.8M finish for the weekend, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 is on track to pull in a solid $350M in theaters before its through. Anticipation continues to build for the final chapter of Lionsgate’s The Hunger Games saga, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2, which is slated to hit theaters November 2015.
While $121.8M is a good haul for any opening weekend, it marks the franchise low for the Hunger Games series, following a pattern set by the first chapters in the two-part finales of the Twilight and Harry Potter film series, both of which took in less then the final chapter in their respective franchises.
- Sony Pictures, Still Alice
In other Hunger Games news, perennial Oscar nominee Julianne Moore, who plays District 13 President Alma Coin in both Mockingjay films, is looking like a sure bet for another Best Actress nod this year for her searing performance as a linguistics professor grappling with early-onset Alzheimer’s in Sony Pictures Classics’ upcoming Still Alice. Opening in limited release on December 5th, Moore’s performance has already garnered her Best Actress honors from the Hollywood Film Awards and the upcoming Palm Springs Film Festival.
- Universal Pictures, Pitch Perfect 2
Also making waves last week was Moore’s Mockingjay co-star Elizabeth Banks, who is finishing up work on her directorial debut, Pitch Perfect 2 for Universal. Proving that Kim Kardashian wasn’t the only one who could “break the Internet,” Banks’ hotly-anticipated Pitch Perfect 2 trailer has drummed up a whopping 12.4 million hits in five days on Ellen Degeneres’ YouTube channel, and the movie doesn’t even open until May 15th. Can you say: “Aca-awesome?!”
Rounding out the top five over the weekend were Disney’s Big Hero 6 with $20.1M, Paramount and Warner Bros. Interstellar with $15.3, Universal’s Dumb and Dumber To with $14M and Fox’s Gone Girl which held strong with another $2.8M in it’s eighth week at the box office.