‘The Hunger Games’ Trilogy Just became a Four Movie Deal

This interesting bit of information about the future of The Hunger Games comes to us via Deadline with additional confirmation from a Lionsgate representative:

Lionsgate executives told Wall Street analysts this morning to expect big things from The Hunger Games, a series of four action films that the studio will release from the trilogy written by Suzanne Collins. COO Joe Drakesaid it was “the highest selling film we’ve ever had” at the Cannes Film Festival and that overseas exhibitors consider it “the movie that can change their company.” Although Lionsgate wouldn’t disclose its budget for the films, Drake says Hunger Games could become an “outsized success” for Lionsgate. The studio says it bought the rights before the books became runaway best-sellers, and it has “retained the majority of the upside” in its talent and distribution deals.

Chris and I have touched on this subject before about planning sequels to films that have yet to be made or released yet. I understand this is a trilogy in the book series and most times then none, popular books much like ‘The Hunger Games‘ will end up making it to the end. However, we have recently seen some very popular books fail miserably and end up getting canned or resold do to poor box office numbers (Golden Compass, The Narnia books, Vampires Assistant, etc…)

We know that Lionsgate is splitting the final Twilight novel, Breaking Dawn, into two films and that the Harry Potter films have been split into two as well (which was the right thing to do), but should they do the same to Hunger Games? I haven’t read the books so I don’t know how detailed they are so please feel free to comment and let us know if you feel that maybe the second or third book needs to be split. But it seems to me like this is just another excuse for Lionsgate to squeeze a little more out of the consumers.

There is always a possibility that this film could fail miserably (Highly unlikely) and Lionsgate will scrap the deal, but for now count on four films coming to the big screen for probably the next 8 years.