New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

Bruce Hall: I am going to come right out and predict that the sequel will surpass the original's opening weekend of $152 million (rubbing eyes....yeah, that's right). Even if it doesn't, I think it will outgross the original in almost every other way, and anticipation will be insane for the last two installments, where they cleverly and deviously stretched one book into multiple films (AND profitably, I might add...cough...Harry Potter....cough...Hobbit...).

As for my personal feelings, I've tried to be anything other than completely ambivalent about the franchise but I can't help it. I did read the books, and I enjoyed them a lot. But it was mostly because they were crisply paced, the characters were well defined, and the story was written in Suzanne Collins' super-efficient, easily digestible prose. The film version was enjoyable but kind of forgettable for me. It captured the overall vibe of the books, but it felt like a mechanically constructed reproduction, devoid of the same heart that made a largely pedestrian plot a lot more interesting than the books would have been in the hands of a lesser storyteller.

But I am not the intended audience here and I believe that right now, The Hunger Games is the obvious answer to "What's the next Harry Potter?"

Kim Hollis: I think it blasts past the first film and becomes the second biggest opener of all-time. I don't think the furor for this franchise has died down a bit. Since the first film was almost universally well-liked, it was also able to build an audience on DVD. Jennifer Lawrence remains the popular it-girl of the moment, and the new film is receiving absolutely glowing reviews. I think it's somewhat fair to compare to Twilight since it's a YA book that blew up huge, and since The Hunger Games crosses demographics in a way the vampire moves did not, there is lots of room for expansion here.

David Mumpower: I agree with Kim. The Hunger Games was a movie whose opened weekend took the entire industry by surprise. The fallout from that was the creation of interest from potential viewers who had been unaware of the franchise previously. Those people sought out the movie later in its release as well as on home video. What they discovered was a crowd pleasing title (A Cinemascore, 84% Fresh at Rotten Tomatoes, 7.2 on IMDb) that fostered interest in future sequels. I believe that The Hunger Games as a brand is exponentially more popular now than it was 18 months ago. I fully expect Catching Fire to become the biggest opener of 2013.

Continued:       1       2       3       4