The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes | November 17, 2023 | Prequel about President Snow | Francis Lawrence to direct | Given a SAG interim agreement

[ban1o]

1 hour ago, interiorgatordecorator said:

pretty good

but some small character moments made me think this had the potential to be something truly extraordinary if it was more committed to a theme and more fully tied it around its exploration of Snow 

like the third act, but it really needed an international monologue, the actual hunger games, outside of some moments that got a bit a creative, really didn't do much for me this time around, the pacing a bit awkward at times and the movie sometimes tried a bit too hard 

I'll have to check out the book

 

 

yeah the book was basically all internal monologue and that was a huge aspect the movie didn't have which made Snow come off as a lot more likeable and also took away some interesting character development. In the book it's clear from the very beginning he's a self serving asshole but that's not as clear in the movie.Like the movie kinda depicts Snow and Sejanus as "best friends" but in the book Snow spends so much time talking about how much he hates the guy and only tolerates him because of his money lol. 

 

 

Edited December 21, 2023 by ban1o

[Speedorito]

Saw this opening weekend but was too busy at the time.

 

Other than the length (which was understandable) and splitting it into three acts very explicitly, I really enjoyed it. Zegler has pipes.

 

I hope this helps launch the careers of the young actors, especially Blythe and Zegler.

[Eric the Fall Guy]

 

[John Marston]

glad this became a leggy hit but it is funny that one of the main reasons is because the guy who played the future, murderous dictator became a hearthrob

[Valonqar]

15 hours ago, John Marston said:

glad this became a leggy hit but it is funny that one of the main reasons is because the guy who played the future, murderous dictator became a hearthrob

Not at all unexpected except around here where fans of SH movies don't really understand audience that's into romance. Enemies to lovers is the most popular romantic trope ever. It's not just in hetero romance but in all of them. Why do you think Erik and Charles are #1 slash ship? The badder the one lover the bigger the appeal of the romance. This will never go out of fashion despite concerned effort to eradicate it.

 

I bet that when Fallout show comes out, fans will ship the shit out of the main girl and the nose-less villain instead of the main girl and the bland hero.

Edited January 6 by Valonqar

[ThePrinceIsOnFire]

16 hours ago, John Marston said:

glad this became a leggy hit but it is funny that one of the main reasons is because the guy who played the future, murderous dictator became a hearthrob

This movie was aiming for the Twilight/After demo of horny teen girls (and maybe gays), and it is ultimately what made it into a slight success. I say "slight" because it went on to earn less than half of what the last HG did worldwide and sold about 1/3 of its tickets, and only made a profit due to a smartly lowered budget. 

I think that it did comparatively worse internationally than dom because they weren't able to sell it as a romance overseas, but rather tried to push the gore and action sequences that were typical of the other HG films, but the overall quality of the CGI (which verges on terrible) and the "been there, done that" sense of deja-vu from the promotional material actually worked against it. It doesn't help that it also got borderline terrible reviews in many countries, much worse than the mixed consensus it received in the USA. 

Edited January 6 by ThePrinceIsOnFire

[Juliet]

20 hours ago, John Marston said:

glad this became a leggy hit but it is funny that one of the main reasons is because the guy who played the future, murderous dictator became a hearthrob

 

His first scene is in nothing but his underwear. He then walks around shirtless for a good minute and a half. And then undresses in the third act. They knew what they were doing. 

 

Its hard to sell a romance where he shoots her at the end. How would you sell Romeo and Juliet in the 21st century? Its a downer

 

I want the 3 hour 40 minute cut of this already

Edited January 6 by Juliet

[ban1o]

20 hours ago, John Marston said:

glad this became a leggy hit but it is funny that one of the main reasons is because the guy who played the future, murderous dictator became a hearthrob

The singing I think helped as well. The songs are doing well on spotify. 

[ban1o]

3 hours ago, ThePrinceIsOnFire said:

This movie was aiming for the Twilight/After demo of horny teen girls (and maybe gays), and it is ultimately what made it into a slight success. I say "slight" because it went on to earn less than half of what the last HG did worldwide and sold about 1/3 of its tickets, and only made a profit due to a smartly lowered budget. 

I think that it did comparatively worse internationally than dom because they weren't able to sell it as a romance overseas, but rather tried to push the gore and action sequences that were typical of the other HG films, but the overall quality of the CGI (which verges on terrible) and the "been there, done that" sense of deja-vu from the promotional material actually worked against it. It doesn't help that it also got borderline terrible reviews in many countries, much worse than the mixed consensus it received in the USA. 

Please no one expected a movie with none of the original cast based on a book a lot of people didn't know existed long after the YA hype died down to make as much as the originals. They made the budget lower intentionally. I'm sure their happy with the results. 

 

Also you're insistence on comparing this to Twilight and After is ridiculous. Just say you didn't like the movie. That's fine. 

Edited January 6 by ban1o

[ThePrinceIsOnFire]

15 minutes ago, ban1o said:

Please no one expected a movie with none of the original cast based on a book a lot of people didn't know existed long after the YA hype died down to make as much as the originals. They made the budget lower intentionally. I'm sure their happy with the results. 

 

Also you're insistence on comparing this to Twilight and After is ridiculous. Just say you didn't like the movie. That's fine. 

 

I didn't see it so I'm neutral on it, I just comment on the basis of its box office results. And again, I'm not comparing the actual movie to Twilight and After for its genre/plot but for the target audience that they share, which is girls aged 13-29 who are into YA novel romance.  I don't get what's ridiculous about it other than pheraps your negative opinion on Twilight/After that is clouding your judgement, when no one is comparing them on the basis of their quality or plot, just their target audience. Which, once again, is not even a comparison that I came up with, since thenumbers and countless of other sites have used them as comps.

Edited January 6 by ThePrinceIsOnFire

[Juliet]

The problem with saying the 'Twilight Demo' is that it doesn't exist anymore. It would be like saying the 'Beverly Hills 90210' demo when Twilight came out. Yes, the ages stay the same but what is 'trendy' changes. 13-29 in itself is such a huge hodge podge of people. This film wanted Gen Z obviously and they succeeded in that. They also wanted Millennials up to 40 who liked the old films to come out. 

 

There are lots of factors as to why it never made Hunger Games money.

1. Quick to Digital becoming the norm
2. The strike impact 
3. That its a prequel. Seriously I looked at the reviews on RT and a lot of the negative ones started with 'I don't like prequels'.
4. People are more skeptical about franchise fare being 'for the money and not the art'.
5. There is no Katniss and Jennifer Lawrence and some folk didn't know what to do with that
6. Rachel Zegler's less than stellar PR
7. The studio not really knowing how to market the film. It's got lots of music but they didn't want it to look like a musical. Its a romance but its a tragic one. Its an action film in the second act. Its a character drama in the third. The mish-mash of all that is one of the things I like about the film but it doesn't make it an easy sell

The OG Hunger Games movie is simple. Girl and Boy hero get put in deathmatch they need to survive and win. TBOSAS is more complicated and more interesting

[ban1o]

2 hours ago, ThePrinceIsOnFire said:

 

I didn't see it so I'm neutral on it, I just comment on the basis of its box office results. And again, I'm not comparing the actual movie to Twilight and After for its genre/plot but for the target audience that they share, which is girls aged 13-29 who are into YA novel romance.  I don't get what's ridiculous about it other than pheraps your negative opinion on Twilight/After that is clouding your judgement, when no one is comparing them on the basis of their quality or plot, just their target audience. Which, once again, is not even a comparison that I came up with, since thenumbers and countless of other sites have used them as comps.

wait you didn't even see it? And you've been calling the film shitty? lmao 🤣

 

"After" demo makes no sense That movie made 12 million domestic and 6 million OW. It basically only was successful because of it's overseas gross.  so the logic that they would target that audience in the US makes no sense. Romance movies are going straight to streaming because studios think there's no audience for them. Twilight ended 12 fucking years ago. That demo doesn't exist anymore. 

Edited January 6 by ban1o

[ThePrinceIsOnFire]

13 minutes ago, ban1o said:

wait you didn't even see it? And you've been calling the film shitty? lmao 🤣

 

"After" demo makes no sense That movie made 12 million domestic and 6 million OW. It basically only was successful because of it's overseas gross.  so the logic that they would target that audience in the US makes no sense. Romance movies are going straight to streaming because studios think there's no audience for them. Twilight ended 12 fucking years ago. That demo doesn't exist anymore. 

I have never called the film in that way (I don't use that kind of language, ever). The only time I talked about the quality of this movie was when I said that, judging by the reviews it got, it's not that good of a movie to grant it an A+ cinemascore, but it's a perfect fit for its target audience so that grants it the good WOM. 

 

After and Twilight are comps because they both come from YA novels that have romance at the center and that are targeted at girls.  The comparison between Beverly Hills and Twilight is not appropriate, as one is an original tv show and the other is YA novel-turned film. The twilight demo still exists just as the harry potter demo still exists, both being literature before movies and both still selling copies to this day (though obviously on a different scale). The preteens and teens that read twilight and after today are also likely the ones who read the HG novel, and fit in the same demo.  It doesn't mean that the demos are perfectly identical just like Wonka and the Greates Showman's demos aren't, but they do have a large common base.

[WittyUsername]

Twilight hasn’t been relevant in over a decade. That’s because hardly anyone cares about it anymore. Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart have constantly poked fun at how terrible they think those movies are, and no one bats an eye. 

[ban1o]

11 minutes ago, WittyUsername said:

Twilight hasn’t been relevant in over a decade. That’s because hardly anyone cares about it anymore. Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart have constantly poked fun at how terrible they think those movies are, and no one bats an eye. 

yeah the idea that just because this movie had  "a pseudo romance" as a  part of its plot means that they were going for the "Twilight" audience just makes no sense. The movie scape has changed completely . it's not 2012.

 

 

[PlatnumRoyce]

The cool thing about Lionsgate is that they're small enough to let you infer data rom their quarterly reports. e.g. I read this current one as saying Hunger Games: Songbirds probably only spent 50M +/-10M on all aspects of marketing Lionsgate controls. 

 

In the final 3 months of 2024, Lionsgate released 2 films - Silent Night ($8M through end of year) and HG: Songbirds (160M out of 166). (with the dregs of Expend4bles adding 3.5M & a good chunk of Saw X's run adding 35M).

> The increase in distribution and marketing expense in the three months ended December 31, 2023 is due to higher theatrical P&A and Premium VOD expense due to higher expense associated with the theatrical release of The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes in the current quarter, partially offset by lower expense for films to be released in subsequent quarters. In the three months ended December 31, 2023,
approximately $10.5 million of theatrical P&A and Premium VOD expense was incurred in advance for films to be released in subsequent quarters, compared to
approximately $15.5 million in the prior year's quarter in the Motion Picture segment

* 54.4 - 10.5 - ?? for silent night + post-OW & PVOD marketing for SAW X (October 10th) + $0 for Exp4debles marketing = 44 - [5-10M(?)]

& Last Quarter>

Quote

 

 In the three months ended September 30, 2023, approximately $15.2 million of theatrical P&A and Premium VOD expense was incurred in advance for films to be released in subsequent quarters, compared to approximately $9.6 million in the prior year's quarter in the Motion Picture segment. 

 

Even when nothing is coming up (i.e. Q1 2024), Lionsgate still spent $10M in P&A but let's call this $10-$15M and let's zoom back one more time to 9 months ago -

 

Quote

Songbirds' Trailer first aired on April 28th and April - June saw  > approximately $20.9 million of P&A and Premium VOD expense was incurred in advance
for films to be released in subsequent quarters, compared to approximately $5.3 million in the three months ended June 30, 2022 in the Motion Picture segment.

 

 

But most of that would have gone to Joy Ride, releasing on July 7th. Moonfall was in a similar position and saw ~$7M in advance P&A spent (but Lionsgate clearly pushed Joy Ride - "After SXSW, Lionsgate screened Joy Ride early on for exhibitors at CinemaCon, where the pic was the centerpiece of the studio’s session."). Let's say that's a max of <$5M

So 

 

•  44 - [5-10M(?)] + [10-15] + [<$5M] = 44M to 59M
•  44 - [5-10M(?)] + 19M * % of P&A spent prior to Oct 1 going to Hunger Games versus other films (found a citation in prior month quarterly report giving 19.xM as an aggregate number of outstanding 

Given that the average blockbuster spends slightly over ~60% of its P&A in the US, lets say this extrapolates to a ~58-81M for a film where we'd have global P&A info (using 2/3rds instead of 60% to account for Lionsgate releasing in more than just the US).

 

Edited February 9 by PlatnumRoyce
45M to 50M after finding error/additional information

[Ryan Reynolds]

finally saw this, enjoyed the different perspective but did not fully work, Lucy was not developed enough and the actress was not good enough  to carry nothing , which someone like Adam Driver could for ST could for an under written charter