Sunrise on the Reaping is outselling Wicked in presales, putting an $80M+ start in play

The Hunger Games prequel arriving this month is selling tickets faster than Wicked did. Advance sales for The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping are running well ahead of the musical’s, Deadline reports, and they are the strongest Lionsgate has seen for any release since the pandemic.

The forecast has moved with them. Only a weekend earlier, tracking pointed to a North American debut of $60M to $70M. The floor is now $80M or more, and on the prediction market Polymarket, traders give the film a 75% chance of opening above $100M.

Here is where those numbers sit next to recent comparisons:

Strong presales are not a guarantee. Films that draw a mostly female audience can be front-loaded, with fans buying early and fewer walk-ups later, so distributors are hedging. The same doubt hung over Wicked, and its early demand still became a $112.5M launch.

The previous prequel shows why the jump matters to Lionsgate. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, the story of a young Coriolanus Snow, had the weakest start in the series, earned a B+ CinemaScore after a run of As, and ended at $166.3M domestically. It also came out during the actors’ strike, and its source novel never had the following of the original books. Going from the franchise’s lowest opening to tracking at nearly double it is quite a recovery.

Francis Lawrence directs the adaptation of Suzanne Collins’ 2025 novel, with Joseph Zada, Elle Fanning, Ralph Fiennes, Jesse Plemons and Mckenna Grace in the cast. It opens on November 20, and the holiday weekend after that does not look crowded at the top: Disney Animation’s Hexed and the Ariana Grande comedy Focker-In-Law are each tracking at $40M to $50M.

Reported by Deadline. Compiled with AI tools.