EXCLUSIVE: A fire continues to burn for Lionsgate‘s The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping when it comes to its presales, which we now understand are well ahead of Universal’s Wicked.
In addition, advance tickets are the best that Lionsgate has ever seen post-Covid for any title. Yes, Sunrise on the Reaping is ahead of Michael which bowed to $97.2M in North America.
Prediction platform Polymarket believes there’s a 75% chance that the feature take of Suzanne Collins’ 2025 novel will open to north of $100M. There are other distribution sources who also agree. But given that female driven movies can often be front-loaded, the floor for the Francis Lawrence directed prequel is now at $80M+ (up from last weekend’s forecast of $60M-$70M). Note, there was also a concern two years ago that Wicked would be front-loaded, however those presales translated into a $112.5M opening. Depending on the demographic and genre of the movie, there’s not necessarily a direct line between presales and an enormous box office opening.
That said, 2024 predecessor The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is no longer a comp here to Sunrise on the Reaping as far as presales go. Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes was hindered by the actors strike and based on a Collins novel which wasn’t as popular as its predecessors. The prequel, which was the origin story about the series most notorious character, Coriolanus Snow, opened to $44.6M stateside, the lowest in the franchise. The movie wound up doing a 3.7x multiple for a final $166.3M domestic. Songbirds and Snakes received a B+ CinemaScore next to the franchise’s previous As and A-s.
With nothing of the blockbuster magnitude of Wicked, Moana 2 or Zootopia 2 on the horizon at the Thanksgiving box office, Sunrise on the Reaping is shaping up to deliver the goods. It would not be a surprise if the Jesse Plemons, Elle Fanning, Mckenna Grace, Joseph Zada, Ralph Fiennes ensemble also wins the 5-day Thanksgiving box office against newcomers, Disney Animation’s Hexed and Universal/Paramount’s Ariana Grande starring Focker-in-Law, which are both looking at $40M-$50M apiece.