Success; Part 1: At the Box-Office

            On February 22, 2012, the film set the record for first-day advanced ticket sales on Fandango, accounting for an estimated 83% of ticket sales on the website for the day. In the week prior to its release, the film sold-out over 4,000 on Fandango alone. On its opening day, the film brought in $67.3 million, ranking it the fifth-highest opening day for a film in history. Within its first two days of being released, the film became Lions Gate’s highest grossing film ever. It is the first film since Avatar to remain #1 in the box office for four consecutive weeks.

In its opening weekend, The Hunger Games brought in a record-breaking $152.5 million- making it the single best opening for a non-sequel film and the third-best opening for any film in the North American continent, following 2011’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II, which earned roughly $169 million, and The Dark Knight, which earned roughly $158 million.

                The Hunger Games also set the record for the most ticket sales via mobile devices on opening day. “My theory for these mobile records is simple. The main demographic for “The Hunger Games” is teens and twenty-somethings. Which demographic is the most likely to use mobile technology to accomplish tasks such as, oh I don’t know, purchasing movie tickets? Teens and twenty-somethings. Pair together a popular teen movie with mobile technology and you get an explosion in usage, but as we all know, over time this will become the norm.” (George Tinari, http://www.intomobile.com/2012/03/26/hunger-games-sets-record-mobile-movie-ticket-sales/)