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Kim Hollis: "The audience for the film was 61% female, with 56% of ticket holders over the age of 25." (from The Wall Street Journal)

Brett Beach: If Kim hadn't popped in with the stat, I would have, for this becomes another example of an event movie driven by females, but with infinitely more of a crossover potential than either the Twilights or (obviously) Sex and the City. The older skewing audience also suggests that this has the potential to pull in continued business for a while longer and not fall off a cliff next weekend. I think what astounds me is how this is comparable in many ways to the launching of the movie franchise of Harry Potter, but with one twist: As I understand it, HP had already sold millions upon millions upon millions of books in the window between the first novel being published in the UK (June '97) and the movie's release (November '01). The Hunger Games has done extraordinarily well in sales but has still sold significantly less. It also had a slightly smaller window from publication to film (Sept '08 to March '12) but seems to have made up for it with the deafening buzz and excitement leading to... $152 million. I would rank this in the top echelon of surprises if only for how quickly expectations were pushed upward over the last six to eight weeks and how this exceeded all of them. The one thing I do wonder about - and I don't know if this plays in the franchise's favor or not, is that the books are already well done and finished. With HP new books continued to run alongside the films for a stretch and with Twilight, Breaking Dawn came out months before the first film. I do think it was very smart to schedule the second film for so far out (Nov 2013, in Twilight's old stomping ground) and the indication, with the cast contracted for three more films, is that Catching Fire or Mockingjay may be two films (whether or not it is warranted as all the novels appear to be the same length).

Max Braden: In the words of Emily Litella: "Oh. ~Never mind.~"

David Mumpower: Nature abhors a vacuum. I had not anticipated that this philosophy would ever come into play in the box office realm yet it has. In the wake of Harry Potter's final curtain call, The Hunger Games has taken the stage as the new entry that appeals to everyone with its impossibly commercial nature. It begins not far behind where Harry Potter ended, at least in terms of opening weekend. And only one Harry potter release earned north of $320 million, which seems like the floor for what The Hunger Games will earn during its domestic run.

Tom was thoughtful to mention a private conversation here in this thread, but I cannot take a victory lap here. As he and others have opined, I would not have expected $152 million. How could I? We are talking about a $36 million (or 31%) bump from Alice in Wonderland. I have stated many times recently that I consider the premise of The Hunger Games to be impossibly commercial. Even so, I am flabbergasted by the way that North American audiences ceded the film status as a linchpin franchise. It has not been treated like nor performed as a new franchise entry. Analysts kept describing The Hunger Games as the next Twilight, yet after only one film, it has already opened better than any of the four Twilight releases. And all of those are MASSIVE! The original question regarding how surprising a turn of events this is may be answered honestly as the most shocked I have been since The Passion of the Christ. The Hunger Games may yet usurp it as the most shocking box office performance I have ever covered.

Reagen Sulewski: While I'm generally loathe to credit competition or lack thereof for the success or failure of a particular film, as we've seen many blockbuster films go head to head before and both come out fine, this does feel like a canny exploitation of a relatively sparse market. Where this film might have gotten a bit lost in between Dark Knight and Spiderman and Avengers etc. etc., in March, it had the whole hype machine to itself. And this is a definite showcase of how the hype machine can build on itself and turn into a runaway. It's sort of the positive spin on what happened to John Carter.

Tim Briody: I can't add anything else here that's not already been said. We were expecting something huge and got something even...huger. Every single time you think the box office has run out of ways to surprise us, something else comes along. After Friday's numbers came out, I made the then-bold prediction that Catching Fire and Mockingjay both break the opening weekend record, whatever it happens to be at the time of release. After this, that doesn't sound as crazy anymore.

Kim Hollis: I mentioned last week in Monday Morning Quarterback that I was feeling that a result somewhere in the $140 million range wouldn't be out of the question. Now, I was still low even at that, and I admit that I'm surprised that we've got the third best opener ever on our hands. I'm also very surprised at the fact that it did so well on Friday, Saturday and Sunday proper, not necessarily needing midnight sneaks to bolster that number. All I can say is that it's one thing when we here at BOP have awareness of a movie. It's something else altogether when my non-BOP friends are buzzing about something, and I have to say the noise was deafening over the last several weeks.

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