Looks like box office odds are in the third Hunger Games instalment’s favour.
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 could open to between $130 to $160 million (Dh477.4 to Dh587.6 million), according to people who have seen pre-release audience surveys.
That would make it the biggest launch of the year, edging out Transformers: Age of Extinction, which pulled in $100 million in its opening weekend.
The Lionsgate film, which opens in the UAE on November 20 and in the US on November 21, is the opening instalment of the two-part finale to the blockbuster franchise based on the bestselling young adult novels by Suzanne Collins.
Fandango, the nation’s largest online movie ticket company, said on Thursday that the upcoming instalment has sold more first day advance tickets than any other movie in 2014 so far.
The film accounted for 80 per cent of Fandango’s daily ticket sales on Wednesday, when advanced tickets became available for purchase. Divergent, another Lionsgate young adult franchise, set the previous 2014 record for Fandango.
Mockingjay also became MovieTickets.com’s top-selling title of the year. It sold more advanced tickets on Wednesday than Catching Fire sold on its first day of presales last year.
In 2012, The Hunger Games debuted with $155 million. It ultimately pulled in about $408 million in the US and Canada.
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, the second instalment of the franchise, opened to $161 million in November 2013. It went on to gross nearly $425 million and took the No 10 spot on the all-time US box-office list, according to the Internet Movie Database.
