Jason Sandford
Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.
Here’s a quick look at a few different takes on the basic news that The Hunger Games, filmed in Western North Carolina and Charlotte, killed at the box office over the weekend:
–The New York Times on The Hunger Games big weekend:
LOS ANGELES — “The Hunger Games” hit the box-office bull’s-eye over the weekend, taking in a record $155 million in North America and setting up what promises to be one of the biggest film franchises of this decade.
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Backed by a meticulously executed marketing campaign from Lionsgate, “The Hunger Games” was a gigantic No. 1 and set multiple sales records, including the strongest opening weekend total for a spring release, not accounting for inflation. The previous record holder, “Alice in Wonderland,” directed by Tim Burton, took in $116.1 million over its first three days in March 2010 and went on to surpass $1 billion in ticket sales at the global box office.
-CNN puts The Hunger Games in context:
Only “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2” and “The Dark Knight” — both sequels, with the strength of a franchise behind each — recorded bigger opening weekends.
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The massive total for “Hunger Games” more than doubles the opening weekend of the first film in the “Twilight” franchise, another set of films that sprang from a young-adult series.
Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson and Liam Hemsworth star in the dystopian fantasy, based on the first book in the Suzanne Collins trilogy about a future society in which teenagers are forced to battle to the death.
–The Los Angeles Times on five lessons to learn from The Hunger Games opening. Lesson no. 1:
Literacy rates. As film source material goes, novels’ stock has been dropping faster than Duke’s title chances did in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament this year. Toys, games and sequels of long-dormant properties have in recent years been considered the way to go if you wanted a big hit. But a bestselling book is, perhaps more than ever, the strongest marketing tool a studio can have. Any doubters need only look at the box-office chart: With “The Hunger Games,” four of the top six opening weekends in history come from books.
