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Kim Hollis: What are your thoughts about The Hunger Games brand as Catching Fire debuts? Do you expect a relatively flat performance compared to the first film, or do you think there will be an expansion of audience?

Jason Barney: I would expect that this is going to be a very substantial opening. I think the $152 million of the original is definitely in play, as we are looking at the beginning of the holiday round-up. Kids will be off all week leading up to Thanksgiving, and if I recall correctly, the opening of the first one wasn't paralleled with any holiday weekends. I don't want to go too far with predicting how high this will go, because there are only five films that opened larger than the first Hunger Games film. It will be big, and will probably pull ahead of the original, beyond that is just guessing, though.

Edwin Davies: I expect that it will get close to the opening of the first film, but I'm not sure if it'll top it, though only because we're talking about such big numbers that it has a huge target to aim for. In more technical terms, the decision not to add 3D means that the film doesn't have an easy way of boosting its opening, and I'm not sure how much the fan base has expanded in the course of a year. In my opinion, the most likely result is that the film equals or slightly undershoots the opening of the first film, but then takes advantage of the holidays to hold better, and potentially wind up being the highest grossing film of the year.

Felix Quinonez: I think this movie will surprise a lot of people. I know the first one was already huge but it was also well liked which means there's a lot of excitement for Catching Fire. Because of this, I think that a lot of people who, like me, caught the first one on DVD will go out to the theaters this time around. And we can't discount how much Jennifer Lawrence's star has risen. Because of this I think it could claim the second biggest opening weekend of all-time. And aside from that, its release date is way better than the March opening of the first one. Its second weekend will be helped by Thanksgiving and the holidays are right around the corner. I think this will definitely help its chances of having strong legs. I truly believe this will be the biggest movie of the year and $500 million domestically is in play.

Max Braden: I don't know about a three-day topping the first movie's opening weekend, but I don't get the sense that the heat for this franchise has waned at all, and Jennifer Lawrence is a continuing to be a hot commodity in the Hollywood press. Plus, despite continued gripes about the economy, I get the feeling that there's money to spend for movies. Macy's just recently announced a promising outlook for holiday retail sales. Even beyond opening weekend, Catching Fire is the blockbuster to see through January, including moderate competition from The Hobbit 2 and Anchorman 2.

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