Waiting for Mockingjay: The Calm Before The Storm

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      So guys, I feel like I need to get real here. I've often talked about how The Hunger Games has changed my life and of course all the epic opportunities I've had that comes with running this site. So why did I feel the need to desperately connect with all you lovely folks online in the first place? Reading The Hunger Games trilogy CHANGED ME. But really, it was Mockingjay. Mockingjay is the reason I love this series as much as I do, and if it were up to me I wouldn't change a single word.

     It's possible you've noticed this site's devotion to the third book, as seen in our Mockingjay Mockup. After reading Mockingjay in the double digits, it became clear that Mockingjay was most deserving of splitting into two. The way Suzanne writes is constantly on the move, and so much happens in such a small amount of pages. This is why we wrote the Mockingjay Mockup so we could convince others not only should this happen, but if it did why it was a GOOD thing.

     So here we are at long last waiting patiently for Mockingjay details to come to light. Here's what has come out this past week:

As you guys may know, they have been filming Mockingjay Part 1 & 2 in Atlanta. (If you leave nearby and wanna be an extra, check out CL Casting "Untitled Trilogy" ) So excited to see that Crazy Cat made the cut!

Today, a GREAT article from Variety was released about the upcoming Mockingjay films. Here are some cool tidbits from the article:

Some opportunities when new Mockingjay material might get released:

There will be reveals of the campaign in May at the Cannes film festival and in July at Comic-Con. Until then, Lionsgate is trying to keep specifics under wraps, though director Lawrence allows that the next two films take place in a Panem so devolved as to be barely recognizable.

The fact that Erik Feig is comparing The Hunger Games to Star Wars is a huge sign to me that Lionsgate execs have the right idea about this franchise.

“Not since Luke Skywalker shot into the Death Star has one person had that kind of impact in a franchise film,” asserts Lionsgate production president Erik Feig. “What I really love about how (the 23-year-old Lawrence) plays that character is that Katniss is larger than life and yet she wears her emotions in a very relatable way. She’s not a superhero by any stretch — she’s all too human in the face of extreme conditions — and she faces them with the presence of mind that we all wish we had.” 

Producer Nina Jacobson adds that thematically, the film strikes a nerve with auds. “I was reading a New York Times article on the set about economic inequality, and it made me feel as if we’re becoming more like Panem each year,” she asserts. “The similarities are striking.”

EPIC DETAILS ABOUT INTERNATIONAL FILMING LOCATIONS!!

Lionsgate has even booked Berlin’s massive Templehof Airport — built in 1927, reconstructed by the Nazis as a symbol of supremacy, and closed six years ago — and huge apartment complexes outside Paris for shooting battle scenes. Feig allows that part of the inspiration came from Stanley Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket,” his cinematic recounting of the 1968 Tet Offensive in Vietnam. 

“Kubrick shot the siege in London,” Feig notes. “In a weird way, we love the idea of urban sprawl. So we (looked for) big buildings that have been around forever. We kept coming back to classic war movies, and we started thinking we should look into Europe.” 

Producer Jon Kilik says the “Mockingjay” films mean Lionsgate is moving to the next level. “We are trying to create the reality of a future that’s rooted in the past,” he notes, adding that shooting in Hawaii for “Catching Fire” added to the film’s spectacle. “Those locations are extra-special, and it’s a real reach financially for them,” Kilik says.

That last piece of information is a doozy. Add this to the fact that Mockingjay is Francis Lawrence's favorite, and what an amazing job he did with Catching Fire in a short time frame, all signs point to a great marketing campaign and great films that will respect the book. I can't believe how lucky we are to have these fine people working on this precious trilogy and honoring it how I had always hoped for.

Check out the full Variety article HERE

Lionsgate Spent $45 Million on Marketing 'The Hunger Games'

How much did it take to market The Hunger Games? Oh, only $45 million.

From the LA Times:

Lionsgate is launching its biggest ever marketing campaign for "The Hunger Games," but still not outspending Hollywood's major studios.

To promote its biggest budget production yet, the Santa Monica-based studio is spending about $45 million to advertise the picture in the U.S., according to people familiar with the matter but not authorized to speak publicly.


Lionsgate typically devotes less than $30 million to selling its nationwide releases, which are often targeted genre films such as "Saw" and Tyler Perry's comedies, though it did spend $40 million to market the 2010 hit "The Expendables."


Hollywood's major studios can spend as much as $70 million to $80 million marketing their most expensive event movies domestically.

Lionsgate has the advantage, of course, of huge built-in awareness for "The Hunger Games." The trilogy of books by Suzanne Collins on which the film is based have already sold 23.5 million copies worldwide.

As a result, the studio has not only been able to afford a more cost-effective advertising campaign, but is able to get away with not showing any footage in commercials and trailers from the actual hunger games, in which teenagers hunt each other to the death in front of a televised audience.

Lionsgate's marketing strategy appears to be working spectacularly well. Pre-release surveys suggest that "The Hunger Games" will have an opening weekend of more than $100 million when it debuts across the country on March 23.

Also check out this interesting article from the New York Times on the specific strategies that Lionsgate employed and what their thinking was on developing the marketing for this movie.

Selling a movie used to be a snap. You printed a poster, ran trailers in theaters and carpet-bombed NBC’s Thursday night lineup with ads.

Today, that kind of campaign would get a movie marketer fired. The dark art of movie promotion increasingly lives on the Web, where studios are playing a wilier game, using social media and a blizzard of other inexpensive yet effective online techniques to pull off what may be the marketer’s ultimate trick: persuading fans to persuade each other.
The art lies in allowing fans to feel as if they are discovering a film, but in truth Hollywood’s new promotional paradigm involves a digital hard sell in which little is left to chance — as becomes apparent in a rare step-by-step tour through the timetable and techniques used by Lionsgate to assure that “The Hunger Games” becomes a box office phenomenon when it opens on Friday. 

While some studios have halted once-standard marketing steps like newspaper ads, Lionsgate used all the usual old-media tricks — giving away 80,000 posters, securing almost 50 magazine cover stories, advertising on 3,000 billboards and bus shelters.
But the campaign’s centerpiece has been a phased, yearlong digital effort built around the content platforms cherished by young audiences: near-constant use of Facebook and Twitter, a YouTube channel, a Tumblr blog, iPhone games and live Yahoo streaming from the premiere. 

By carefully lighting online kindling (releasing a fiery logo to movie blogs) and controlling the Internet burn over the course of months (a Facebook contest here, a Twitter scavenger hunt there), Lionsgate’s chief marketing officer, Tim Palen, appears to have created a box office inferno.

Read the rest of the article at the source.

While $45 million is a lot, especially for a studio like Lionsgate, it's actually on the low side when compared to other blockbusters' marketing budget. Lionsgate has used a lot of relatively inexpensive methods to market The Hunger Games.

Hunger Games Kicking Off Marketing Campaign With Mall Tour!

According to the LA Times,

The film is kicking its marketing campaign into high gear with the mall tour, which begins March 3 at the Westfield Century City mall in the Los Angeles area. Director Gary Ross and stars Lawrence, Hutcherson and Hemsworth will be on hand to meet fans and media at the L.A. event. The weeklong tour, featuring different stars, also includes stops in Atlanta, Phoenix, Chicago, Miami, Dallas, Minneapolis and Seattle. Fans can RSVP to the tour on the film’s Facebook page.

Source: LA Times

Needless to say, we will DEFINITELY attending the kick-off on March 3rd. We're also wondering, could THIS be the Capitol Tour TheCapitol.pn is referring to?