The Hunger Games Prequel Failure Thread
POSTED BY: 6ixStringJack
UPDATED: Monday, December 25, 2023 00:02
VIEWED: 5249
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or...
Boy, is Lionsgate struggling after coming out of the gate strong in 2023.
Let's come right out and state the obvious. Rachel Zegler already killed this movie before it even had a chance, and I'm betting that the ongoing Actor's Guild strike is going to leave them with some concessions but also put hard rules down about what actors and actresses can talk about on Social Media and talk shows in the coming wake of destruction that Zegler's interviews will cause this unrelated and as-of-yet even unpromoted film.
Both The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes and Lionsgate are now innocent bystanders in the current high temperature culture war, and interviews that have surfaced about its lead actress's thoughts about the original Snow White cartoon have enraged people across the whole spectrum of political thought, when in under just 2 minutes she shit all over the legacy of Walt Disney by thrashing the animated feature that put Disney on the map in the first place. Future interviews saw her doubling and tripling down on her disdain for the source material. Then, during the peak of the tandem Writers and Actors strikes, she came off like an entitled little brat, bitching to somebody's camera that "if she's going to wear a dress all day long when shooting, she deserves to be paid every time somebody streams Snow White", only leaving millions of people like me to think to ourselves "I don't get paid for shelves I stocked 20 years ago, and I had to wear a dumb-looking and uncomfortable uniform while doing it, so why should you?"
Rachel Zegler... A never-was actress who is likely to be Box Office kryptonite for some time to come has two acting credits to her name. 2021's ill-advised West Side Story remake had a production budget of $100,000,000 and only grossed $74,826,329 worldwide. It lost Fox Studios $175 Million in the Box Office and has only gone on to sell $1.35 Million in BluRay and DVDs. 2023's Shazam: Fury of the Gods is currently her only other released Box Office performance. It had a $125,000,000 production budget and only made $132,192,362 worldwide, losing Warner Bros. $180 Million.
So far, the two movies Zegler has starred in have lost a staggering $255 Million, and this was all long before the actress's malignant personality was blasted all over social media for the world to judge.
Of the 5 future-release credits she has on IMDB, she has already been dropped from one of them. The creators of Paddingon in Peru have recently decided that her services will no longer be required in that production. Fortunately for her, the other 4 future-releases are all in Post-Production, and it would likely be far too expensive for anybody to recast and re-shoot her roles now. My advice to her would be to save that money and refrain from buying a Beverley Hills mansion until her PR team can figure out a way to patch up her reputation.
Speaking of financials... How much will Hunger Games 5 need to make in the box office to break even? Well... we don't exactly know the answer to that yet. As far as I can tell, Lionsgate hasn't released any numbers for their Production Budget yet.
But this would be a good time to look at the previous movies and how they did.
The Hunger Games (2012) had a production budget of $80 Million. Its Worldwide Box Office was $677,923,379. That was a massive $477M to $517M, and at a time so long ago now where you could add quite a bit to that total for inflation. Beyond that, it also grossed a further $226 Million in BluRay and DVD sales.
Production Budget: $80M. ($107M with inflation)
Total Estimated Profit: Between $590M and $630M. ($789M to $842M with inflation)
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013) had a production budget of $130 Million and a Worldwide Box Office of $864,868,047. It was $50 Million more to make than the first, but it still made to $540M to $605M in the box office. Again, 10 years ago, so you could add quite a bit to that total for inflatio
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Reading that post made me wonder if you were pulling a sloppyseconds and just plagiarizing somebody else's writing and posting as your own, without attribution.
But thanks for reminding me that I gotta watch Expendables, I was far too busy last weekend.
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Quote:
Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
Reading that post made me wonder if you were pulling a sloppyseconds and just plagiarizing somebody else's writing and posting as your own, without attribution.
No. I'm an excellent writer when I want to be.
If you really look at it, I'm sure you can see quite a few "Jackisms" that I use elsewhere in there. Not to mention all of the accurate data that isn't exactly easy to come by if you hadn't already put it all together yourself, or spent quite a bit of time putting together the Hunger Games series specific data. How many people have you read online recently that put that type of effort into data? I'd argue that you don't see any economists writing articles with that much data in current year when they're discussing much more serious topics than this. If you were an AI program, I'd bet you'd match up that post with my others here and find that it's at least a 98.9% match.
But go ahead... I challenge you to find that article in part or in full anywhere online. You won't find it anywhere but here.
You're a smart guy. You can figure out how to look for that. Any time I've suspected Second of copying other people's work I've managed to find the source material so I can call him out on it here. You've even got contact info for Haken. Maybe you could get him to tell you how many times the post was edited. I'd be surprised if he told you it was under 20 times. I frequently do that with my posts that aren't directed toward tweedle-dumb and tweedle-dumber. I "update post", re-read it, fix errors, add new things, "update post" and do it all over again... either until I feel it's perfect or I get bored.
In fact... I just did it 8 times with this reply.
For now though... Until such time as you can come up with any proof of your accusations, I'll take that as a backhanded compliment.
And while you're busy investigating that, I'll just sit back and wait and find out whether I'm completely full of shit or not when the movie drops.
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But thanks for reminding me that I gotta watch Expendables, I was far too busy last weekend.
Have fun?
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Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.
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Not really an accusation. Just a feeling I got, like it wasn't an off-hand post like some others post around here.
All those updates and edits do crank up the View Counter. I like when I'm mostly satisfied with a post (OP) and there are less than 5 views.
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Quote:
Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
Not really an accusation. Just a feeling I got, like it wasn't an off-hand post like some others post around here.
All those updates and edits do crank up the View Counter. I like when I'm mostly satisfied with a post (OP) and there are less than 5 views.
Yeah. It definitely wasn't off-hand. I didn't intend for it to be nearly that long either when I started, but I just kind of kept adding to it. Did I ever mention I have a lot of free time?
It didn't get 1/20th of the revisions that my new tables in the Hollywood thread got that afternoon when I worked about 6 hours on creating them, but there were quite a few. Maybe 20 is too high. Probably a dozen.
They say that brevity is the heart of wit. Nobody has ever accused me of being brief with my writing, so make of that what you will.
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Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.
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I just noticed this part...
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And from perusing the internet I've found that critical reception to the last two entries was pretty mixed as well. One of the biggest complaints I've seen was that the 3rd entry was too long and boring, while the 4th movie felt rushed. It left a bad taste in their mouth.
The Hunger Games left a bad taste in their mouth. lol. No pun intended.
But now I'm thinking I should go back and edit the first sentence in the 2nd to last paragraph:
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I just don't think that anybody cared enough about The Hunger Games in 2023 to make this prequel effort worthwhile in the first place.
I just don't think anybody had an appetite for The Hunger Games in 2023, amiright?
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Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.
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A thread without linky. Topics spoken of obliquely, assuming we know everything already.
Let's fix that:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10545296/?ref_=nm_knf_t_3
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Quote:
Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
A thread without linky. Topics spoken of obliquely, assuming we know everything already.
Let's fix that:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10545296/?ref_=nm_knf_t_3
I think I was pretty fucking direct.
It's not looking good for this one.
https://boundingintocomics.com/2023/10/20/rachel-zeglers-the-hunger-ga
mes-the-ballad-of-songbirds-and-snakes-predicted-to-have-franchise-worst-opening-weekend/
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Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.
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Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack (September 27th):
...
Speaking of financials... How much will Hunger Games 5 need to make in the box office to break even? Well... we don't exactly know the answer to that yet. As far as I can tell, Lionsgate hasn't released any numbers for their Production Budget yet.
...
So what would the production budget for Songbirds and Snakes look like?
Well... In 2015, the production budget for HG4 was $160 Million. In 2023 money, that would have cost over $207 Million to make.
Is Lionsgate going to spend $200 Million to make this movie today? I doubt that very much. Its two largest budget movies this year were John Wick 4 and Expend4bles, both clocking in at only $100 Million. JW4 was a success, but nowhere near the level of any of the Hunger Games movies. Expend4bles will be a disaster for Lionsgate this year.
Wise move.
As I suspected, the budget for Songbirds and Snakes comes nowhere near $200 Million in 2023.
At least in early reporting, the budget was $100 Million. The same amount they spent on John Wick 4 and Expendables 4.
That's going to mitigate the upcoming disaster for Lionsgate quite a bit. It only now needs to make $250 Million Worldwide instead of $500 Million.
Speaking of its prospects...
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And then 8 years passed...
Does anybody even care about The Hunger Games in 2023?
And if some people still do, do they care enough about any of the characters from the original movie to go out en masse and see the origin story of these characters leading up to the eventual happenings of the original Quadrilogy when they already know how it ends?
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that they don't. The Hunger Games is no pre-Disney Star Wars, and some of you might remember how that turned out. Yeah... It made money, but it was Star Wars. Fans hated it for a decade before Disney came out and made the Prequels look like cinematic masterpieces in retrospect.
This stuff all just snowballs on each other over time. People eventually remember that remakes/reboots/prequels and even sequels past a trilogy are very rarely ever worth watching. And 2023 in general has given us plenty of evidence that the market has hit a saturation point with all of them and people just don't want to pay to sit through any of it anymore.
I just don't think that anybody cared enough about The Hunger Games in 2023 to make this prequel effort worthwhile in the first place. To me, this just comes off as another cash-grab from a studio trying to make some bank of of nostalgia by giving the audiences something they never asked for in the first place. I'm hoping that Lionsgate didn't screw the pooch and slap $200 to $250 Million on the table for this one, going into 2023 thinking they could take a risk like that because John Wick 4 and Expend4bles were going to cover any potential losses. If they only spent $100 Million on it, they might be able to avoid another serious financial disaster in 2023. That's really their only way out of this one.
Coming fresh off of the realization of what a terrible miscalculation resurrecting the 9-year-dead Expendables franchise was, I'd be terrified right now if I was a big-shot at Lionsgate with the prequel to the 8-year-dead Hunger Games franchise release looming. And I doubt that they will ever consider hiring Rachel Zegler to act in another movie they make. In all fairness to her, I don't think this movie would have done much better than breaking even in the best case scenario in the first place, but when it fails... and it will fail... they're going to be looking for any scapegoat they can find for the failure, and Rachel served it right up to them on a silver platter.
According to an article by Deadline, they're claiming that this will make $50 Million on opening weekend. I think that's probably high.
BoxOfficePro predicts in the area of $35 to $45 Million on opening weekend, with a Domes
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Rachel Zegler, thats Hollyweirdo land product known as the SJW Antifa actress? Snow White movie delayed by a year
and Strike?
Rachel Zegler Given Permission To Promote ‘The Hunger Games
https://boundingintocomics.com/2023/10/31/rachel-zegler-given-permissi
on-to-promote-the-hunger-games-the-ballad-of-songbirds-and-snakes-issues-first-statement/
She stars in the WestSide Story - a flop
Zegler starred as Anthea in the superhero film Shazam! Fury of the Gods another bomb, a box office flop
Snow White ...seems to have been postponed to 2025? 2024? 2026?
Shazam!
so now
Third time Lucky? The Hunger Games
Zegler was initially not invited to attend the 94th Academy Awards ceremony to support her colleagues involved in West Side Story, which received seven nominations, including Best Picture. After some controversy over the perceived snub in the media, the Academy invited her to be a presenter.
https://web.archive.org/web/20220410144805/https://www.today.com/popcu
lture/awards/west-side-story-star-rachel-zegler-not-invited-oscars-rcna20829
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