Hunger, hype and ‘hecticity’

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This article was published 25/03/2012 (5302 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

LOS ANGELES — Jennifer Lawrence says she has invented a word to describe the electric frenzy she is experiencing as leading lady of The Hunger Games.

“I made the word up — hecticity,” Lawrence says. “It’s all around this movie.”

Devotees of Suzanne Collins’ best-selling young-adult sci-fi/adventure trilogy have waited with giddy anticipation since Hunger Games’ 2008 publication for it to be adapted for the screen. Fan websites hosted 100-day countdowns to Friday’s release of the film, distributor Lionsgate conducted fever-stoking publicity tours at malls across America, and fans camped out overnight at the March 12 Los Angeles premiere for the opportunity to scream at the film’s stars as they walked the red carpet.

The film stormed into 4,137 theaters Friday on nearly 10,000 screens across North America with a burden of hype — a dictionary-recognized word that Lawrence is not fond of.

“Hype is the worst thing for a movie, and we have so much of it,” she says. “It totally scares me.”

She’s not the only one watching with some apprehension to see what happens when hype meets “hecticity.”

The Hunger Games is more than a movie. It’s the beginning of a franchise with Twilight-esque aspirations of financial grandeur centred on three charismatic stars: Oscar-nominated Lawrence (2010’s Winter’s Bone), Josh Hutcherson and Liam Hemsworth. Lionsgate has announced a release date of Nov. 22, 2013, for the second installment of the trilogy, Catching Fire.

Much is at stake for this story of a dystopian future where young people are randomly selected to fight to the death in an annual televised event. But, to paraphrase the movie’s catchphrase, the odds are very much in its favour.

“Everybody has really bought into The Hunger Games’ buzz,” says Jeff Bock, senior box-office analyst for Exhibitor Relations.

Bock notes that Hunger Games “is reaching Harry Potter and Twilight proportions right now, which is amazing since it’s the first movie right out of the gate. You don’t often see this in the first of a series. But this is not just teenage girls pushing it. It’s teenage boys as well.”

The signs are everywhere. Movie ticket website Fandango.com already has crowned The Hunger Games as the top-selling franchise of all time based on the 2,500 showtimes that were sold out in advance. Wall Street stock in Lionsgate has soared to all-time highs.

In its opening day Friday, the film racked up $68.25 million in revenue — a record for a non-sequel.

The Hollywood Reporter went beyond the industry’s conservative $82-million opening weekend tracking estimate and predicted in a box-office “shocker” that the movie could break the $140-million mark over the weekend. By comparison, the first installment of The Twilight Saga in 2008 made $70 million in its first weekend and led to the franchise’s first four films earning $1 billion. (The final installment is due in November.)

“Even the expectations putting Hunger Games near $100 million are a huge deal,” Bock says. “When you talk about that, you are talking about ‘cine-magic.’ People are aware this could be the next Twilight. But that might be jumping ahead of ourselves.”

It’s a discussion that sends shivers down producer Nina Jacobson’s spine.

“No one wants to be the Miami Heat of movies — the presumptive winner,” Jacobson says, referring to the “can’t-miss” NBA team. “There’s a franchise fever here. Well, audiences decide what works in a franchise — studios don’t decide, marketers don’t decide it. It’s not a franchise until people go and say they want to go again.”

Jacobson produced the 2010 surprise hit Diary of a Wimpy Kid and was at Disney overseeing the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie before it marked Johnny Depp’s triumph. Neither had to deal with hype.

“Everyone thought we were idiots doing a movie about (an amusement park) ride,” she says of Pirates’ early days. “It was a sneak attack. We knew we had something no one else did.

“The Hunger Games has not exactly been a sneak attack,” she sighs. “I have found this to be very nerve-racking. I keep worrying that people’s expectations might get ahead of us. We have never had anything with so many eyes on it before.”

The scrutiny started in 2009 when Jacobson secured the rights to The Hunger Games around the time Collins published the second book, Catching Fire. (The third book, Mockingjay, was published in 2010.)

Fans weighed in passionately on every casting announcement, which ranged from established Hollywood stars such as Elizabeth Banks (who plays the wildly apparelled Effie Trinket) and Donald Sutherland (president of the sinister ruling Capitol) to unknowns such as 13-year-old Amandla Stenberg (the innocent Rue).

Lawrence’s casting as Katniss Everdeen was the biggest deal. She asked for three days to think about it before accepting. “It was just too big to say yes to right away,” says Lawrence, 21. “I knew this was life-changing. I just wanted to iron it out, every thought, every doubt.”

Visiting London at the time, she entered a coffee shop and tried to imagine life after playing Katniss. “I was walking through the shop thinking, ‘A year from now, everyone will be taking pictures of me on their phones. That will suck.'”

Games’ North Carolina film set was off-limits, keeping the actors in a bubble. From May to September last year, they had to deal with mudflows from the excessive rain and the odd bear. But looming larger was the spectre of the movie’s release.

During a break in one scene, Hutcherson, who plays Peeta Mellark, the other fighter from Katniss’ district, looked for advice from Woody Harrelson, cast as his drunken mentor.

“I told Woody, ‘Honestly, I’m scared. I don’t know how to deal with this,’ ” recalls Hutcherson, 19. “He told me to go about my business, not listen to the hype.”

With filming wrapped in September, the fan excitement continued to mount. Hemsworth recalls being at a Los Angeles restaurant when a young fan approached from afar. “As she got closer, her mouth opened and she just started crying,” he says. “I was like, ‘Oh, my God, what am I going to do?'”

Hutcherson’s fan reaction was even stronger when he went home to his family in Kentucky over Christmas. After dinner, the doorbell rang.

“It was this mom with these two girls, and they started crying when I came out,” Hutcherson says. “They had clothes with Peeta’s face pictured all over. They had driven six hours on the chance that I was home. They saw me through the window, eating, so they wanted to wait for me to finish my dinner. They were polite stalkers.”

Lawrence started to notice that paparazzi found out where she lived in Los Angeles, and they were watching at all hours.

“It’s like every single time I walk out of the house, I’m caught,” she says. “And I walk out without makeup and without brushing my teeth thinking I can get away with it this one time. I don’t.”

The new world order was clear at the cast’s first mall visit in Los Angeles the first week of March. With an estimated 2,000 fans, this was a true taste of fan “hecticity.” Says Hutcherson: “People were crying. It was cool, but kind of scary. People have this disconnect where they see you as this character. It’s crazy.”

Adding to the movie’s already powerful teen box-office appeal is that all the actors are consummate ambassadors. During her one day off on the extensive press march, Lawrence spent hours visiting fans camping outside L.A.’s Nokia Theatre who were hoping to get into the film’s world premiere. At the swanky after-party, Hemsworth, 22, spent so much time with his fans that girlfriend Miley Cyrus sat alone on a couch reading her smartphone for much of the evening.

The networking is going to be crucial to the bottom line, especially in the fickle teen market — the hardest demographic to track for box-office predictions.

Director Gary Ross avoided excessive violence in the film to ensure a PG-13 rating — key to bringing in the maximum number of young fans. While the book deals with gruesome deaths, the handheld movie cameras pull away from excessive gore.

“The movie is told from Katniss’ point of view; she doesn’t have time to gawk at the violence,” Ross says. “We don’t back off the violence in the book, but there’s no need to indulge in it. We strike the right balance.”

Ross points out that the movie was relatively inexpensive to make, with a budget estimated at $75 million to $90 million. “We know it’s going to be financially successful,” he says.

Nonetheless, even Lawrence will be following the numbers. “I’ve never looked before, but I’ll be watching this one,” she says.

She also will have time to mull her new lifestyle, one she has never regretted taking on since her three days of soul searching in London.

“If I could pass a message to myself from now, I would say, ‘It’s exactly what you were thinking, but it’s all going to be OK.'” Lawrence says. “And then I’d probably tell myself to make sure to put makeup on when leaving the house.”

 

— USA Today