UPDATE FRIDAY MORNING NOV 21st: Overnight “Mockingjay Part 1” earned $17 million– 33% off of last year’s Thursday night opening for “Catching Fire.” Not a good sign. And the teens around me are not clamoring to go tonight, as they did last year.
EARLIER: Are people — I mean, teens– tired of “The Hunger Games”? The new soundtrack to “Mockingjay Part 1” is curated by hot teen singer Lorde. Yet it’s listed atnumber 92 on amazon.com. On iTunes, “Mockingjay” is at number 14, even with the Lorde imprimatur. Hitsdailydouble..com is predicting sales of only 20-25,000 for its debut week. The last “Hunger Games” CD sold 55,000 copies– and that was just a year ago– in its first week.
FYI: The first “Hunger Games” CD sold 180,000 copies in its first week back in March 2012, and entered the charts at number 1.
Meantime, the movie itself is not catching fire with reviewers. On Fandango, “Mockingjay Part 1” rates an average of a 67 among reviewers. This may be a better indication than Rotten Tomatoes, where often negative reviews don’t correlate with “Fresh” or “Rotten” status. The consensus so far is that “Mockingjay” is well made but dull. It’s the first part of a book that most fans of the series agree doesn’t kick in until the end.
Of course no one doubts “Mockingjay Part 1” will have a big first weekend. But after that, it may not be so easy. Meantime, it’s interesting that Lions Gate had a premiere only in L.A., and just a stealth screening in New York at the very down-market AMC theater in Times Square. A good movie gets trumpeted with a Ziegfeld red carpet or something up at AMC Lincoln Square.
