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Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2 has worst debut of franchise

Off target: Jennifer Lawrence stars as Katniss Everdeen in the Hunger Games series
Lionsgate
Clare Hutchison
23 November 2015

The last instalment of the Hunger Games film series wasn’t quite the dramatic finale studio bosses may have been hoping for, having pulled in the lowest opening weekend takings of the franchise.

‘The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2” topped the weekend box office in the US and became the year’s fifth largest debut with takings of $101 million (£66.7 million).

However, that was below the $158.1 million high for the series scored by 2013's ‘The Hunger Games: Catching Fire’ and short of analyst predictions for $120 million.

The miss has already hit shares in studio Lionsgate, which fell 3% on Friday.

Globally the film made $247 million, shy of the $274.9 million for ‘Mockingjay – Part 1’ and the $300 million pencilled in by some forecasters.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 Premiere In Los Angeles

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It made $17.1 million in Britain.

"The overall marketplace is slow," Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Rentrak, told Variety.

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"There's too many movies, too many distractions, and so much going on in the world right now."

Other commentators have suggested that the two-part format didn't work for Mockingjay in the same way that it did for the final films of the Harry Potter and Twilight series.

Still the two Mockingjay films, based on Suzanne Collins' novel of the same name, have taken more than $1 billion at the box office, almost double what a single instalment would have grossed.

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