Lionsgate Blames Star Wars For Mockingjay Performance
Despite being one of the most popular recent movie franchises, the conclusion of the Hunger Gamers, Mockingjay Part 2, did the worst when compared to the other films. The biggest of which was Catching Fire, which made $173 million upon opening weekend, where as Mockingjay Part 2 did considerably less. When asked by Deadline as to what the reasons were for the massive drop, they cited both Star Wars and real life terrorists attacks:
“I think the combination of circumstances was unique between the terrorist attack in Europe and Star Wars,” said Rob Friedman, Lionsgate’s co-chairman of the Motion Picture Group. He said the box office overperformance of Star Wars “hit our numbers by somewhere between $50M and $100M.”
He goes on to note that 2017 for Lionsgate should be a lot more successful, as 2016 has very few films from the studio releasing, and they’re very excited for what is coming:
“Clearly we feel very,very excited about Power Rangers, Hood (which stars Jamie Foxx), The Odyssey among others — not to mention Now You See Me 2 is coming and we are already starting for Now You See Me 3,” said Friedman. “So, we feel we have a lot of IPs that have a lot of breakout possibilities.”