Box Office Shocker: 'Hunger Games' Third Best Opening Weekend of All Time
8:20 AM PDT 3/25/2012 by Pamela McClintock
Lionsgate's book-to-film adaptation grosses a staggering $155 million, shattering records and surpassing any "Twilight" pic.
Making history, Lionsgate's The Hunger Games opened to an astounding $155 million at the domestic box office, the third-best debut of all time and the best for any film opening outside of summer.
Hunger Games -- the big-screen adaptation of Suzanne Collins' best-selling young-adult novel starring Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson and Liam Hemsworth -- also reeled in the biggest opening for a nonsequel.
The Gary Ross-directed tentpole came in not far behind the $158.4 million earned by The Dark Knight in its July 2008 debut. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 holds the record for best debut with $169.2 million in summer 2011.
Among the films that Hunger Games beat in its debut were Spider-Man 3 ($151.1 million in 2007), The Twilight Saga: New Moon ($142.8 million in 2009) and The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 ($138.1 million last year).
Hunger Games drew an A CinemaScore overall on Friday night, with those under the age of 25 giving it a glowing A+ and those over 25 an A-. Tweens and teens turned out in force for the film, with 39 percent of the audience younger than 18, according to CinemaScore exit polling.
Part of the movie's strength is that it is appealing to males as well as females, unlike the femme-heavy Twilight franchise, another blockbuster film property based on a young-adult book series. Males made up 39 percent of Hunger Games' Friday night audience.
"The numbers just kept growing and growing. And based on the trajectory of the weekend, we are going to have an unbelievable hold. We are going to play and play," Lionsgate executive vice president of distribution David Spitz said. "I think that when we initially looked at this property, we thought we were going to have Twilight numbers in terms of females, but we didn't."
Hunger Games also played like a family film, evidenced by its strong Friday to Saturday hold. The film fell a narrow 25 percent, while the Twilight and Harry Potter films fall anywhere from 44 percent to 60 percent.
According to CinemaScore, 49 percent of those showing up to see Hunger Games were under the age of 25; Lionsgate's exit polling showed that 44 percent were under the age of 25.