This blog post is based on how the Hunger Games movie had been produced, distributed, marketed and how the consumption of the movie from the viewers has had perhaps one of the greatest movie grossing impacts of all-time.
Production:
The Hunger Games was produced by North American independent company, and the most commercially successful independent film & TV distribution company in the States, Lionsgate. Lionsgate had obtained worldwide rights to the Hunger Games book series in March 2009 with Color Force which is Nina Jacobson's production company.
With potential risk hazards such as poison ivy and a chase across fast-running water, a risk analysis would need to be utilized for the movie in order for the production process not to stop progression at any time possible. The budget for the movie was initially meant to be $75 million before increasing to $90 to $100 million and then being reduced to $78 million after subsidies (contribution of money).
They had also ensured that their movie would be faithful to its roots by including a teenage/youthful cast in the movie itself with Jennifer Lawrence portraying herself as the role of Katniss, the main protagonist of the novel series too. This way, it would not only appeal to teenagers who have yet to read the Hunger Games novels but would also be produced with the right execution as it would make readers enthusiastic knowing about how the film does not stray away from the novels (similarly to how potential summer blockbuster, The Amazing Spider-Man, is being produced with more attention-to-detail being based on the Amazing Spider-Man comics due to the Gwen Stacy character being in the movie as she was in the Spider-Man universe before Mary Jane's arrival.)
Distribution:
Lionsgate Entertainment had distributed The Hunger Games which would then be rated a 12A by the British Board of Film Classification due to the intense threat, moderate violence and gore which would occur not-so-often throughout the movie.
However, the movie was distributed for the teenage audience due to the fact that all of these aspects which had deemed the movie to be a 12A/PG-13 are all done and shot within scenes which all include teenage actors which reflect the target audience they had initially wanted to aim the movie at (as well as also distributing the movie for the adult audience too as The Hunger Games is not entirely aimed at teenagers but a broader audience as well as readers who were critical fanatics of the novels made by Suzanne Collins. The film was also distributed to the audiences with early screenings which would be available for consumption by these audiences a mere amount of hours leading up to the much-anticipated release of the novel-based novelty.
Marketing:
In celebration of the countdown to The Hunger Games, Lionsgate Entertainment would display 24-hour early screenings prior to the release in an attempt to successfully market the product so that if they receive early positive reviews, or critical acclaim from the viewers, this would likely lead to an increase in the box-office made for the movie as well as any box-office records (as box-office expectations, from box-office watchers/predictors, were expected to exceed $120 million) and had made a large amount of money that it became the third-highest opening weekend grossing film of all-time.
The film had Lionsgate's stocks powering up to over 75% this year after the release of The Hunger Games due to the fact that Lionsgate had a different marketing strategy in comparison to other film companies which had distributed movies based on comics, books or novels as they ensured that The Hunger Games would be a stand-alone film and not be entirely compared to the novels and they had also done this with the promotional material used to advertise the film as this material would shift the focus away from the story elements in the novel series.
Furthermore, the fact that they had a female protagonist play the "revolutionary hero" character manages to appeal to, both, male and female audiences due to the fact that, according to 2003 research by young adult librarians Dawn Cartwright and Patrick Jones (now a teen author), young males would tend to gravitate towards comic books, magazines and informational texts (e.g. Batman Begins, Spider-Man series, Iron Man) whereas females would tend to watch narrative fiction more (e.g. the Twilight series).
