“The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2”, the fourth and final installment in the novel to screen franchise, had the weakest opening weekend of the series making a tad over $100 million in the U.S. Lionsgate’s theory of splitting the final book into two movies, based on the previous successes of the “Harry Potter” and “Twilight” films, didn’t pay off, financially, this time.
While Lionsgate may not have seen the box office decrease coming, they did recently alter course for their other tween/teen book to screen series. “Divergent”‘s final chapter, “Allegiant” was originally going to be split into two films for 2016 and 2017. While there are still going to be two movies, instead of titling these films Parts 1 and 2, they are “The Divergent Series: Allegiant” and “The Divergent Series: Ascendant”. “Insurgent”, which was released in March, grossed $20 million less than the original “Divergent”. 20th Century FOX’s property “The Maze Runner” also saw a year-to-year ticket sale decrease. 2014’s first installment made $100 million, but “The Scorch Trials”, released the same weekend one year later, only managed $80 million. Part 3 of this series, titled “The Death Cure”, will hit theaters in Feb. 2017. So we get a one year break – that’s the good news. The not-so-good news: there are FIVE “Maze Runner” books, so two other films (at least) could be in our future. Consider yourself warned.
Other sequel stories from 2015: In the comedy department, audiences responded to a second “Pitch Perfect” and “Hotel Transylvania” but not another dose of “Paul Blart” and “Ted”. “Taken 3” proved Liam Neeson action movies are running out of gas. “Jurassic World” was the fourth in the “JP” series, and we all know how that turned out.
Fifth go-arounds worked for “Mission: Impossible” (“Rogue Nation”) and an updated “Vacation”, but “Terminator Genisys” bombed. The sixth “Paranormal Activity”, “The Ghost Dimension” was the least successful of this worn-out franchise. And “Spectre” was a disappointing Bond 24. But it’s a triple-header of SEVENTH installments that will be dominating the year-end recap headlines: “Furious 7”, “Creed” (aka “Rocky VII”) and, of course, “Star Wars: The Force Awakens”.