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Max Braden: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 opened to $125 million after Order of the Phoenix and Half-Blood Prince had been low point openers in the middle of the series. Hallows 1 (the seventh movie in the series) was the best opening of the series, and was then significantly surpassed by Part 2 the next year.

I'm not concerned about the drop in the opening number compared to the previous Hunger Games movies because of a few factors: I'd heard negative reviews of the book compared to the others, a mid-series entry is like the late second act of a story in that things are often in limbo and not going the hero's way, and that recent imitators like Divergent have possibly taken the shine off series wow factor. The bottom line is this is the biggest opening of the year so far. I also expect we'll see a significant jump in the opening number for Mockingjay 2 as audiences want to see the conclusion of the series.

David Mumpower: I think we have all touched upon the key factors in evaluating its box office. In the Weekend Wrap-Up, Kim Hollis and I evaluated the binge-watching aspect that also might have come into play here. Consumers have been trained to expect a certain behavior, and these split films fly in the face of that notion. The same folks who rushed to catch up with Breaking Bad in order to be ready for the series finale are now being told that they should A) run out to watch this movie and B) wait a year for the conclusion. That's cinematic blue-balling. I understand why consumer behavior was altered a bit for Mockingjay Part 1.

Having acknowledged the underlying issue, I want to mention a key point here. Captain America: The Winter Soldier was the sequel to a beloved film, and it had the Avengers bump going for it. Still, the film opened to less than $100 million. The same is true of Thor, and an argument could be made that Transformers: Age of Extinction was anticipated by the odd folks who enjoy those films. None of them opened to this level.

Had the first two Hunger Games movies opened under $100 million, we would be obsessing over the way that Lionsgate somehow grew the brand. I have mentioned multiple times the oddity of the franchise's first two films opening so high and earning $400 million domestically. Only Star Wars and Batman (and Iron Man if we count The Avengers) have accomplished that feat. If this is what passes for a step back in box office appeal, the franchise is in rare air.

Kim Hollis: Do you feel like The Hunger Games franchise is slipping?

Jason Barney: No. Absolutely not. The performance of Mockingjay 1 is relative to some of the largest openers of all time and the international numbers will be more impressive than the previous two films. I don't believe it is slipping at all.

Edwin Davies: As I suggested in response to the previous question, I feel that this is the result of a very specific set of circumstances rather than franchise fatigue as a whole. Mockingjay Part 1 had some disadvantages that the first two did not, most of which stem from the lesser quality of the book and the inherently unsatisfying way that the story has to be split in two. The worst case scenario for the series is that Mockingjay makes $50-100 million less than the first two films, then people catch up with it in time for Part 2, at which point the series rebounds in a big way as people rush to see how it ends.

I feel that there wasn't that much of a rush for people to see this one, but that it doesn't necessarily represent an irreversible decline for the series.

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