Team Edward vs. Team Jacob who? Katniss Everdeen may be unfortunate enough to have been shipped off to the 74th Hunger Games, but she’s got two eligible bachelors chasing after her, making her one lucky girl with a tough decision on her hands. One minute Gale’s being all manly and taking care of her family while she’s away, but then Peeta gives her those puppy-dog eyes and kills a rival. How can she possibly choose between the two? We break it down.
Peeta
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The Hunger Games rocked the box office with a $152.5 million opening and now some are predicting that The Hunger Games: Catching Fire will kick off its run with an opening weekend gross of $150 million-plus. (I think it’ll come closer to the $160 million mark.) These aren’t “normal” numbers and neither is the first film’s $691.2 million worldwide total. Not only does that intake suggest an especially enormous amount of people caught the film in theaters, but it also means a lot of those people probably did so more than once.
Success like that begs the question, what is it about The Hunger Games? Why this young adult-to-film franchise and not Percy Jackson, I Am Number Four, Beautiful Creatures, The Host or one of the many other attempts to follow in the footsteps of Harry Potter and The Twilight Saga?
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Wouldn’t it be just awful to be born in District 3 if you just weren’t naturally tech savvy? And what if you didn’t like water, but your parents hailed from District 4? Squeamish around animals? Hopefully your family lineage doesn’t plop you down in District 10.
Just in case modern civilization is ever decimated and replaced by a country that consists of 13 hardworking districts and one über-posh Capitol, you better know where you’d thrive. With The Hunger Games: Catching Fire due in theaters on Friday, November 22, Fandango teamed up with TheFandom.net to devise a personality quiz that’ll let you know which Panem district you’re best suited for.
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Strong marketing push or no marketing push at all, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is bound to demolish the box office on November 22. However, this is Lionsgate we’re talking about, and if we learned anything while watching the company handle the release of the firstHunger Games film, it’s that its marketing team is on point. But, even though the Web is currently oversaturated with Catching Fire goodies well worth watching and reading, a few other potential book-to-film franchises are clawing at some of the young-adult hype.
Here’s a rundown of some of the biggest need-to-know YA movie items of the past couple of weeks.
THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is only eight days away and that means the marketing campaign is in overdrive. Google Catching Fire and you’ll be flooded with a wealth of interviews, premiere photos, clips, TV spots and more, but in an effort to whittle down the vast amount of material, we’ve pinpointed five must-know, must-see items.
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We had some serious competition for the top three spots this week. Even though that nostalgic clicking noise in the Lego Movie trailer is an endless charmer, we’ll need more access to the story and characters before we can get behind Emmet’s mission to take down Lord Business. The Wolf of Wall Street came close, too, but the fact that this latest promo is far less refined than the last left it in middle ground. However, the first trailer for X-Men: Days of Future Past did hit the cusp of the Best Stuff and might have snagged a spot at the top if these three entries didn’t rock so much promo power.
The Best Stuff
1. Labor Day
It isn’t easy hitting an ideal amount of exposition in a two-minute trailer, but the pair of new promos for Jason Reitman’s Labor Day certainly do, and in two different respects. I much prefer the narration and dialogue-heavy edition as it creates a stronger connection to the characters and, therefore, makes the scenario far more compelling, but the second still hits all the necessary beats and leaves you needing to know the details of all the narrative’s layers.
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In case you missed it, Movies.com had the opportunity to chat with Vampire Academy screenwriter Daniel Waters, and he showered us with information on his adaptation process, his thoughts on Rose, his hopes to continue to adapt the series, and loads more. You can check out the full interview right here.
We’ve also got some new material from a couple of the actors from the film. Lucy Fry (Lissa) recently took the time to talk Vampire Academy and enlighten us on what it took for her to adjust from the Australian sun to the Moroi’s late night existence. A brief video interview with the film’s Christian Ozera, Dominic Sherwood, also surfaced. In it, he answers a fan-submitted question, unveiling his favorite thing about his character and discussing the appeal of playing a vampire.
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The book-to-film adaptation of Cassandra Clare’s The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones hits theaters today, and the companies and people involved have a lot riding on it. Unlike most potential franchise starters, the second film in the Mortal Instruments series, City of Ashes, was announced well before the first film’s release and even went into preproduction back in May. Yes, there are long-term projections, but that early on they’re far from sound and certainly don’t make moving forward with film number two any less of a risk.
But what’s done is done, and soon enough we’ll find out if that leap was worth it. The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones opens solo at 3,000 theaters, and then come Friday it goes head to head with The World’s End and You’re Next, not to mention the box office veterans that are poised to hold strong.
At a glance, looking at Mortal Instruments alone, you’d expect the film to match Beautiful Creatures or The Host, which isn’t a good thing considering the former took just $7.6 million in its opening weekend and the latter only $10.6 million during its debut. Then there’s alsoPercy Jackson: Sea of Monsters, which just last weekend proved there isn’t much interest in supernatural YA material at the moment.
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Two release delays and some serious director drama typically isn’t a good sign, but the first trailer for 47 Ronin actually isn’t all that bad. A number of vivid and highly impressive visuals are enough to sustain the film’s first promo, but the display does raise concern that the final film won’t offer enough attention to story details. Regardless of where this one ends up, for now, 47 Ronin is nowhere near worthy of the Best Stuff, but keeps clear of the Worst, too.
The Best Stuff
1. Gravity: The “Drifting” trailer is an unnerving and heart-wrenching display of isolation, but this honor goes to the “Detached” edition thanks to having that plus an absolutely incredible amount of suspense, too. On top of that, it’s tough to imagine Alfonso Cuarón spoiling one of the more riveting scenes in the film, so if he’s willing to unleash this as part of the promotional effort, just imagine the horror that’s to come in the full feature.
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Big-screen superheroes stole much of the San Diego Comic-Con spotlight, but now more than ever, young adult book-to-film adaptations aren’t far behind. Sadly The Maze Runner only made it to Nerd HQ, but Ender’s Game, Divergent, The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, The Seventh Son, and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire all enjoyed their own panels, interviews, press conferences, convention center floor giveaways and more.
Check out the highlights from each film’s Comic-Con run below.
Ender’s Game might have made the most significant impact of all. It opened the event with the Ender’s Game Fan Experience, held a full morning of interviews the next day, rolled into Hall H later that afternoon, had a presence at the Summit party that night and then continued to spread the word via giveaways at the Summit and Lionsgate booth inside the convention center.
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The Twilight Saga is long gone, but six new young-adult adaptations might take its place. The San Diego Comic-Con programming schedule has arrived and Ender’s Game, Divergent, The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, Seventh Son, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and possibly Maze Runner are due for appearances in Hall H.
As a sequel, The Hunger Games is likely to be the only one that’ll draw a massive crowd and fan rabidity à la Twilight, but this year could also mark an opportunity for the young-adult realm overall to plant some serious roots at the event. As far as film in Hall H goes, there are six comic book or graphic novel-to-film adaptations and also six YA-to-film ones, and of those six there’s a pretty good shot three or maybe even four could maintain an SDCC presence over the next few years.
We may have cut the Twihards loose, but Twilight’s impact on the industry and on Comic-Con has opened the door to not one, but six new dedicated fandoms. Better hit that Hall H line bright and early.
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