Divergent Vs. The Hunger Games
Divergent Vs. The Hunger Games
Written by Amanda Koplien
The weekend of March 22nd, consumersset out to witness the screenplay version of the novel series phenomenon, Divergent, by Veronica Roth. The story tells of a futuristic city divided into five groups, determined by a characteristic aptitude test and a female heroine’s attempt to help make peace among the system when one of the groups rebel. Sound familiar? The release of the new movie was given harsh reviews, being continually compared to the recent success series, The Hunger Games. Will the success of the Divergent series be altered or embraced thanks to the overwhelming success of The Hunger Games?
Upon opening weekend of new movie, Divergent, consumer spending totaled to approximately $60 million compared to the opening weekend of The Hunger Games which brought in about $152.5 million after just the first few showings. When reviewing these numbers, the new series does not seem to compare to the original phenomenon but that didn’t stop Divergent from hitting #1 in the Box Office. To look at in perspective, another popular movie of 2014, Endless Love, brought in about $30 million revenue it’s opening weekend—Divergent doubling their earnings entirely and proving that this film is still an incontrovertible sensation when compared to movies besides The Hunger Games.
While the film was still wildly successful, the production cost of Divergent had been originally set at a budget of $40 million—a generous number for the first movie of a series—and was increased to $85 million after competition arose with The Hunger Gameswhen producers endorsed about $88 million in production spending on movie number one in the four part series. On opening weekend alone, Divergent had not yet made a marginal profit on their sales, being still below the profit margin by $25 million while The Hunger Games brought in about $70 million revenue on the first weekend alone. With this being said, at the rate which the new movie is taking off, their profit is estimated to skyrocket after the first full week of showings.
It is estimated by Hollywood Critic Lucas Shaw of The Wrap that overall, Divergent will reach “gross close to $350 million” bringing in $265 million marginal profit while it is still in theaters and will continue to grow once the movie comes out on DVD and hits the shelves, estimated to arrive in August of 2014. As a film standing on its own, Divergent is receiving an incredible marginal benefit regardless of its “competitor” series released before it.
Even with such incredible revenuecoming from the new Divergent series, The Hunger Games accumulated over $400 million in theaters alone. After the success of the first movie, the Lionsgate Entertainment production company brought in over $424 million in ticket sales from the sequel The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, with a production cost of $130 million—quite a jump from the first movie budget of $88 million—Lionsgate was left with just under $300 million in marginal profit, which continues increasing each and every day.
Divergent is only the first of the 3 part trilogy series, planned to be released in three movies reflecting each book individually. Talk has been had as to why the Divergent series is not planning to split the third book into two movies, in turn, increasing their gross income similarly to many other recent, successful films such as The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 and Part 2, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 and Part 2, and coming soon, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 and Part 2. Each of these series’ made the executive decision to break the final book up into two separate movies in order to expand the growth of the phenomenon and continue exponentially increasing revenue on the already successful series. It seems as though Lionsgate is in no way worried about the success of the movie and believes that the following movies in the Divergentseries will do well without the need to force an extension in order to keep their fans interested.
It is still unclear as to why critics claim the series to be unoriginal and unsuccessful for their achievement has created a nationally known phenomenon in a matter of a few weeks, being compared to The Hunger Games, one of the most successful series of our generation. The sensation of the series is expected to expand over the next few years as release dates of the finale two movies have been revealed and fans continue to rave over the story of the Divergent.
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