The odds were definitely in The Hunger Games favor this weekend: the big screen adaptation of the immensely popular young adult novel opened to an enormous estimated $155 million, which ranks third all-time behind Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 ($169.2 million) and The Dark Knight ($158.4 million). Remarkably, it debuted above all of the Twilight movies, and it also topped Alice in Wonderland ($116.1 million) for highest debut ever for a non-sequel.

Among all the impressive Hunger Games statistics, two lesser-discussed ones are worth highlighting. First, the movie had an incredible hold on Saturday—it only fell 25 percent to $51 million, which ranks second all-time behind Spider-Man 3 ($51.3 million). This suggests that demand for The Hunger Games exists across a wide array of moviegoers, and isn’t just rooted in the type of rabid fans that drove the front-loaded openings for recent Harry Potter and Twilight movies.

The other crazy statistic is one that should result in a noteworthy spike in champagne sales in Santa Monica, California this week—after just over two days in theaters, The Hunger Games has already passed Fahrenheit 9/11 ($119.2 million) to become Lionsgate’s highest-grossing movie ever.

Knowing that they had something special on their hands, the company went all-in with one of their most expensive productions ever (just under $80 million after tax rebates). Lionsgate followed that up with a nicely targeted marketing effort that consistently built up anticipation until it reached a fevered level over the past month. Aside from just reaching out to fans of the book, though, they went a step further by clearly outlining the high stakes and making the movie seem accessible and interesting to a broad range of potential moviegoers.

While a majority of the audience for The Hunger Games were women (61 percent), the fact that it did have some appeal to men as well surely helped it get as high as it did. In comparison, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1‘s crowd was 80 percent female. The Hunger Games audience also skewed slightly older (56 percent were 25 years of age and up), and they awarded the movie a strong “A” CinemaScore.

On 268 IMAX screens, The Hunger Games grossed an estimated $10.6 million this weekend. That’s roughly $40,000 per screen, which is a very impressive figure for a 2D movie that doesn’t include any footage shot in IMAX.

Thanks to the mammoth movie in first place, the Top 12 earned an estimated $206.9 million this weekend. That’s the ninth-highest aggregated weekend ever, and first all-time in the month of March.

While The Hunger Games was obviously the biggest draw this weekend, there were other movies in theaters as well.

Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax dipped 43 percent to $13.1 million in its fourth weekend in theaters. With a total of $177.3 million, it’s now lagging behind Despicable Me by $13 million; regardless, it still looks like a lock to close with over $200 million.

This may have been the weekend where John Carter officially transitioned from domestic disappointment to disaster. The movie plummeted 63 percent to just over $5 million, bringing its 17-day total to just $62.3 million (or less than The Hunger Games made on opening day). It is playing better overseas, but it’s still not at the levels needed to really ease the pain over at the Mouse House.

read more at  Box Office Mojo.

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Lionsgate just revised upwards its worldwide total to a massive $214.25 million for The Hunger Games which was projected to be the No. 1 title in virtually every single market globally. The studio reports this morning that this opening weekend’s North American grosses for Lionsgate’s The Hunger Games total a humongous $155 million after making $68M Friday and $51M Saturday anticipating a decent $36M Sunday hold. That’s a record-setter: the 3rd all-time biggest opening three-day weekend, behind 2008′s The Dark Knight ($158.4M); and the highest non-sequel opening weekend ever; and the highest March opening ever. Other Hunger Games records include the highest debut single day for a non-sequel ever, and the highest opening of all time outside of the Summer blockbuster season, and the 5th highest opening day ever. It also beat the Twilight Saga: The Twilight Saga: New Moon debuted to $142.8M in November 2009, and The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 opened to $138.1M in November 2011. Exit polling showed the audiences were 61% female and 39% male, with 56% ages 25 and older and 44% under age 25.

The Hunger Games began shattering records with its $19.75M midnights from 2,565 theaters Friday. Then it expanded into 4,137 locations in the U.S. and Canada, ending up with a per location average of $37,467. Screen count was just under 10,000 prints, about 75% of which are in digital theaters including 268 IMAX theaters across North America where it scored a record-breaking all time high weekend. IMAX’s domestic weekend box office is $10.6M, which is approximately $40K per screen — a massive figure since IMAX only has one screen per location. This weekend broke two key records as IMAX’s best opening weekend for a non-sequel 2D title, and best digital only release.

Lionsgate also finally reported its weekend international numbers which were a very strong $59.25M and tracking ahead of the first Twilight Saga film. The pic opened worldwide day-and-date in 67 markets this weekend on an estimated 7,700 prints everywhere except for Spain, Italy, Japan, and South Korea. The first international numbers coming in from Australia scored a huge $1.8 million (USD) on 471 screens, which was bigger than the debuts down under for Iron Man ($1.0M) and Quantum Of Solace ($1.0M). Then that Australia number went up a big +20% the next day — which is unusual. It ended up just under $10M. The UK grossed a big $7.5M, Russia was a breakout $6.5M, and New Zealand a strong $1.27M. Scandinavia markets combined for $3.7M, Germany $3.9M, France $3.75M, and early estimates include Mexico $3.59M and Brazil $2.6M. Asian markets also posted very solid numbers: Philippines $1.71M, Singapore $1.38M, Taiwan $1.36M, Hong Kong $709K, Malaysia $655K, Thailand $649K. In the UAE $656K and the Gulf region with almost $1M combined.

Why is it doing so well? Because this brutal actioner about love and courage was based on Suzanne Collins’ best-selling trilogy of post-apocalyptic young adult novels and made better than it had to be given all the omnipresent marketing and media hype. Kudos to director Gary Ross (Pleasantville, Seabiscuit) who wrote the screenplay with Collins and Billy Ray, and to the casting of Jennifer Lawrence, Liam Hemsworth, and Josh Hutcherson whom movie critics say are ‘pitch perfect’ for their roles as Katniss Everdeen, Gale Hawthorne and Peeta Mellark, respectively. Kudos as well to producer Nina Jacobson and Lionsgate execs Joe Drake and Alli Shearmur and Tim Palen and Julie Fontaine. Problem is, Hunger Games breaks a long string of box office failures for the studio. So now that Lionsgate has bought Twilight Saga mini-studio Summit and installed the top execs from there to run the movie operations, Drake is no longer co-CEO and Shearmur is being moved to a producer. Welcome to Hollywood, folks.

Adding to the great reviews around the globe (87% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes), domestic audiences gave The Hunger Games an ‘A’ Cinemascore with under-age 18 teens/tweens rating it ‘A+’, an indication of their extreme satisfaction with the movie. Rival studios say The Hunger Games, unlike the Twilight Saga, has expanded from attracting both younger and older females initially now to younger makes as a 3-quadrant movie. And the heat from the anticipation by teens and tweens is making those adults who tap into the cultural zeitgeist start getting interested. So now it’s a 4-quadrant film. Amazingly, NRG tracking showed that over 90% of moviegoers said they were aware of the film right before its release, and roughly 2 out of 3 moviegoers in America who said they were “definitely” going to the movies this weekend were buying a ticket to see The Hunger Games. Huge lines snaked around those U.S. and Canada movie theaters able to schedule Friday midnight screenings. Some locations even arranged to play The Hunger Games at 3 AM and even continuously during this opening 3-day weekend. This is the  biggest movie start ever for Lionsgate, which now can count on a blockbuster bonanza for its franchise. “I’ve never lived up at this level. Very few people have,” one ecstatic Lionsgate exec gushed to me Friday night. “I did see some champagne glasses flowing down the hall.”

What made Lionsgate’s promotional campaign for The Hunger Games so unusual and probably effective was that the studio stuck to the rare strategy of not showing any footage of the games themselves in any marketing materials. So all that staggering amount of interest in this film was incited with no one having actually seen even a hint of over half the movie. Marketing kicked off last summer with 2 Entertainment Weekly covers during production to announce the cast, as well as the launch of the motion poster of the iconic flaming mocking jay. (Since EW has long been the semi-official mag of the Twilight Saga, Lionsgate took a page from Summit — which it now owns.) ABC’s Good Morning America debuted the entire trailer on air in November. Between the release of the first Hunger Games trailer in November 2011 and January 2012, the number of Collins’ books sold nearly doubled. By the time of the film’s opening, Hunger Games was on over 50 magazine covers.

The studio estimates its TV on-air promotions and sponsorships reached over 102 million people in America. They included a 3-night “studio lot sponsorship” on FX movies, Fangasm spots on MTV featuring the Real World Challenges cast, a Comedy Central ‘Action Countdown’ weekend, and an ABC Family ‘Premiere Party’ during the Season 2 finale of Pretty Little Liars where teen female viewers helped break social media records while twittering about a clip featuring fan favorite Peeta. According to SocialGuide, this generated the most social media buzz for any one-hour TV episode on record. The digital campaign was massive and started with the launch of the cast on The Hunger Games‘ Facebook page, then exploded over the past year with its own blogs. Lionsgate also worked exclusively with Microsoft to create games and apps. Publicity-wise, the film had an 8-city mall tour with thousands of fans at each stop around the country, as well as promotional screenings in 26 markets. The film had 5 premieres globally, starting in LA at the Nokia, and then London,Paris, Berlin and NYC.

via ‘Hunger Games’ Box Office Predictions — $19.75M Sets Midnight Records.