Blockbuster – How to make a profit
The film industry depends on blockbusters. On average 350 films are released annually but only 35 make serious money. The Hunger Games is classed as a “blockbuster” because when the film released, it set records for opening day ($67.3 million) and opening weekend for a non-sequel. At the time of its release, the film’s opening weekend gross ($152.5 million) was the third-largest of any movie in North America. It is the first film since Avatar to remain in first place at the North American box office for four consecutive weekends. The movie was a massive box-office success by grossing $685 million worldwide against its budget of $78 million, making it the third highest grossing film in the United States and ninth highest grossing worldwide of 2012. It was released on DVD and Blu-Ray in the August of 2012 and was the best selling DVD of 2012.The HG movie etc had made $691,247,768 by the October of 2012 according to Box Office Mojo.
How was this achieved?
The delivery date was carefully chosen so that there wasn’t much competition in the cinema for the target audience at the same time
Merchandising was carefully done to make sure the name, Hunger Games, was always in the public eye. Before the official The Hunger Games film came out, a lot of merchandising came out to promote the film’s upcoming release.
Some of the merchandise included the following:
- Mockingjay pins
- Clothing
- Pillow Cases
- Backpacks
- Magazines
- Dolls/Action Figures
- Nail Polish
- Cardboard cutouts
- Calendars
Even some websites were created to further more promote the movie in any way they can, such as Capitol.pn where a user could take a quiz to find out their district and connect with Facebook to learn the latest details on the film.
Lionsgate had the advantage, of course, of huge built-in awareness for “The Hunger Games.” The trilogy of books by Suzanne Collins on which the film is based have already sold 23.5 million copies worldwide. As a result, the studio had not only been able to afford a more cost-effective advertising campaign, but was able to get away with not showing any footage in commercials and trailers from the actual Hunger Games, in which teenagers hunt each other to the death in front of a televised audience. Lionsgate’s marketing strategy worked spectacularly well. The entire advertising budget was only $45,000,000.
Product placement – there was one example of an advert for Sprite – a Coke brand – which appeared on a billboard about 40 minutes into the film. The film makers made money out of placing the product in the film. It did not happen by accident.
