The Hunger Games: Catching Fire Lawrence Hutcherson on Stage - H 2013
There’s still more than a month and a half to go until Lionsgate’s The Hunger Games: Catching Fire opens in theaters, but the dystopian sequel is already burning up ticket sales after going on sale just one day ago.
After going on sale at 9 a.m. PT, tickets for Catching Fire represented 70 percent of sales on Tuesday, according to Fandango. The film, starring Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson and Liam Hemsworth, is outpacing Fandango’s presales of all previous wide releases 50 days before release date.
And on Movietickets.com, Catching Fire represents 54 percent of all tickets sold yesterday, according to the site.
PHOTOS: ‘The Hunger Games: Catching Fire’: The Character Posters
Based on Suzanne Collins’ popular YA book, Catching Fire follows Katniss (Lawrence) as she and Peeta (Hutcherson) are forced to return to the deadly Hunger Games while dealing with increased unrest in the Districts. Francis Lawrence is directing.
The third and fourth films in the franchise — Mockingjay: Part 1 and Mockingjay: Part 2 — will open wide on Nov. 21, 2014, and Nov. 20, 2015, respectively.
The first Hunger Games film, which opened in theaters on March 23, 2012, grossed $152.5 million on opening weekend, making it the third-largest opening of any movie in North America at the time. It went on to gross $690 million worldwide.
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire opens in theaters on November 22.
E-mail: Rebecca.Ford@THR.com
Twitter: @Beccamford
