Hunger Games trackers are $40m apart on Sunrise on the Reaping

The two published reads on what The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping opens to next month are $40m apart. Boxoffice Pro issued its long-range forecast on 23 October: a domestic debut between $55m and $65m. On Wednesday, World of Reel reported that presale data from the tracker EmpireCity Box Office points to $100m or more, a figure the site called "a real possibility" for Lionsgate.

The low end of that spread would be the second-worst opening in the franchise's history. The high end would be a full recovery. Both cannot be right. The gap between them is the actual story of this film's release, and it is worth setting out what each side is betting on.

The argument sharpened on Wednesday night, when the film premiered in London to the kind of reactions a studio would pay for. Critic Griffin Schiller called it "the Rogue One/Andor of the franchise", TheWrap reported, and Nerds of Color's Nikita Francois called it "easily the best film in the Hunger Games franchise". Joseph Zada, who plays the young Haymitch Abernathy (the part Woody Harrelson originated), drew the sort of notices Lionsgate will be quoting until 20 November. Ralph Fiennes, the third actor to play President Coriolanus Snow, walked the carpet alongside Glenn Close, Jesse Plemons, Kieran Culkin and Elle Fanning. Full reviews are held until nearer release, so first reactions are, for now, the only critical signal in the market.

The stakes are not subtle. Lionsgate sold the film to international distributors as the next instalment of a $3.3bn franchise, and that franchise remains the closest thing the studio has to a reliable earner. A $55m opening and a $100m opening are two different companies.

What this franchise actually opens to

The four original films opened to $152.5m, $158.1m, $121.9m and $102.7m between 2012 and 2015. Note the direction of travel. Then came the first prequel: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes debuted to $44.6m in November 2023, 57% below where Mockingjay Part 2 started and the lowest opening the series has recorded.

What happened after that opening is the part the two trackers are really arguing about. Ballad did not collapse. It crawled upward for weeks, finishing on $166.4m domestic and $347.9m worldwide against a $100m budget, per The Numbers, which is 3.7 times its opening weekend. Big franchise films do not post that multiple. They open loud and fall hard. Ballad opened quietly and held, which means its audience existed but refused to show up on the first Friday.

That is the whole case for the bullish read. The people who waited for word of mouth in 2023 have no reason to wait in 2026, because the verdict on the prequel era arrived three years ago, and the premiere reactions have now topped it up. Presales, on this theory, are simply showing the 2023 latecomers converted into 2026 early birds.

The Rogue One maths

Take Schiller's comparison literally, because the arithmetic is instructive. Rogue One opened to $155m in December 2016, which was 63% of the $247.9m debut The Force Awakens had posted a year earlier, as AP reported at the time. Apply that same 63% to this franchise's best opening, the $158.1m of Catching Fire, and you get roughly $99m. That is, give or take a rounding error, the number the presale optimists are now floating.

The sober forecast sits at 35% to 41% of the same peak. Ballad managed 43% of its predecessor. On the franchise's recent form, Boxoffice Pro's range is not pessimism. It is the trend line.

Why the two reads disagree

Presales measure the devoted. A long-range forecast tries to measure everyone else, the people who decide on the Wednesday before, and there are always more of them. The devoted were coming on 20 November regardless, so strong presales three weeks out tell you the fan base is intact, which nobody doubted, rather than how wide the film plays.

There is also a precedent on this exact series, and it favours the forecasters. Going into Ballad's opening weekend in 2023, The Hollywood Reporter recorded pre-release projections of roughly $50m, while Deadline's tracking had pointed nearer $44m. The film opened to $44.6m. On its one recent test, tracking read this franchise to within $6m.

We have also just had a month-long demonstration of how wrong both instruments can run. Tracking missed Street Fighter's opening by $12m this month, in the optimistic direction, while the preview maths pointed to $30m when louder voices said $43m. Tracking is routinely $10m wrong. It is rarely $40m wrong, which is why one of these two reads is going to look silly on 22 November.

A "hint" is also not a forecast, and the distinction matters. Boxoffice Pro publishes a numbered range every week and revises it in public as data arrives; when it misses, the miss is on the record. A report that $100m "looks like a real possibility" carries no range, no floor and no accountability, and a comeback narrative sells tickets for every company in the chain while it runs. Our money is on the forecast being low and the hint being lower than its headline. Somewhere around $70m splits the difference and would still double Ballad's start.

Lionsgate opens the film in North America on 20 November, the same pre-Thanksgiving window every entry since 2013 has used, and director Francis Lawrence's fifth film in the series has the weekend essentially to itself. Boxoffice Pro updates its forecast weekly between now and then. The first number nobody can argue with arrives with Thursday previews on 19 November.