How Much Will The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes Gross at the Box Office?

Up until now I have not given the Hunger Games prequel, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, much thought. It simply seemed to me that there was just not much demand for the movie (certainly nothing to inspire confidence in grosses on par with those of the preceding four films).

After all, the Hunger Games saga did not seem to cry out for continuation--let alone a prequel. This seemed to me all the more the case because of the way the saga, in print and on screen, ended on a disappointing note for many (the fourth film was the lowest-grossing of the lot by a significant margin, its gross a third or so down at the North American box office from the second film's); because the young adult dystopian action-adventure fad was already waning at that point, and now seems far behind us; because in book form the prequel had robust sales but does not seem to have had the phenomenal sales the original trilogy managed, testifying to the decline of interest; and because of the kind of success the original Hunger Games was, and the way the prequel relates to that.

Reading that original Hunger Games trilogy (I did discuss this in Cyberpunk, Steampunk and Wizardry) it seemed to me that Suzanne Collins succeeded with readers by interesting them in the personal drama of Katniss Everdeen--rather than with striking ideas, or a particularly compelling world, on which levels the book seemed to be weaker, while also being less successful with readers. (Considering the weaker response to the third book and the final two films it seemed to me significant that by this point the story increasingly emphasized "the bigger picture," the high politics, the harder sci-fi elements, which were both less well–conceived and presented than the personal story of the earlier books, and a tougher pitch to the general audience than a personal drama.) And this prequel is set way before Katniss Everdeen came along--a prequel relying ultimately on the interest of the background that seemed a weak foundation, with all that implies for a blockbuster-sized audience buying tickets to this one.

The result is that while I did not bother making estimates, Boxoffice Pro's first long-range forecast regarding the film came to me as no surprise--their prediction that the movie will pull in $90-$142 million, not on its opening weekend, but its entire North America run. In other words, even at the high end of the range the movie can be expected to pull in fewer dollars over that whole run than the first Hunger Games managed in its opening weekend more than a decade ago (when in March 2012 it grossed $153 million). Adjusted for inflation the projection for the prequel actually falls short of what the first Hunger Games movie made in its first two days ($118 million, or $158 million in September 2023 dollars). It is also scarcely two-fifths of the real terms gross of the lowest-earning of the movies (the fourth, Mockingjay--Part Two, whose $281 million in 2015 equals $365 million in September 2023 dollars).

Of course, one might wonder if the international market will come to the movie's rescue. As it happens the domestic/international split varies from 59/41 to 43/57 in the case of the four films released between 2012 and 2015. Let us now derive from these proportions multipliers for the North American gross as a way of calculating the worldwide gross--1.7 at the low end, 2.3 at the high end. Multiplying $90 million by 1.7 gets us $153 million. Multiplying $142 million by 2.3 gets us $327 million. Rounding for the nearest $50 million this gives us a range of $150 million-$350 million, versus the $850 million that the fourth film made globally in today's terms (or the $1.14 billion the second film, Catching Fire, made).

There is no way to read this as anything but a collapse in the global as well as the domestic gross, even at the high end, never mind the low--enough so that while I have yet to see a budget declared for the film from a source I feel that I can rely on, in light of the prior films' budgets (circa $80 million for the first, $160 million for the fourth, and thus $100-$200 million+ in today's terms) it seems safe to assume this production was not cheaper. Even at the bottom end of the range (a movie budgeted like the first Hunger Games, at least when the net is considered, with post-production costs merely comparable) for the movie to have much chance of breaking even with the help of its post-theatrical earnings it would need to make much more than $200 million, well above the bottom end of the range.* For a movie budgeted like the fourth film it would probably need even more than the $350 million comprising the high end of the range here. The result is that I can picture this production, which seemed to me ill-conceived from the start, easily being another addition to the year's already long list of big-budget money-losers.

* The premise of this estimate is that a $100 million film would, given the final bill being at least twice the production budget, come to $200 million+; and that films at this level tend to make well over 50 percent of their total gross from theatrical ticket sales; suggesting $120 million+ in rentals, and thus $250 million in ticket sales, as a necessity. With the film plausibly running a multiple of that in regard to expenses (a $200 million+ production, as much or even more for associated expenses like marketing and distribution for a total not implausibly in the vicinity of a half billion), that much more in the way of ticket sales is needed (especially as home entertainment, streaming, etc. revenues tend to have a lower ceiling than ticket sales).