7 ― Hunger Games
POPULARITY: Suzanne Colllins’s book trilogy is Amazon’s best-selling series of all time, while the 2012 film counterpart had the fifth-biggest opening weekend in history ($152.5 million domestic) and became the thirteenth-biggest-grossing domestic movie of all time ($408 million). Has inspired countless tie-ins (a cookbook, a sports club workout, a $999 Mockingjay pin).
FACEBOOK FOLLOWERS: 7.8 million
TWITTER FOLLOWERS: 657,000
FAN NICKNAME: Tributes
MAIN HANGOUTS: Mockingjay.net, Hunger Games Tumblrs
AVERAGE DEMOGRAPHIC: Female, teen, or teen at heart. Thanks to better writing and kid-on-kid violence, the franchise attracts a wider following than its vampire counterpart, Twilight, but the core audience is still young women.
DEVOTIONAL PROFILE: Mere hours after Jennifer Lawrence was cast as the big-screen Katniss in 2011, the forums were rumbling: She's not skinny enough! She's too fair-skinned! Her hair is (gasp) blonde! The immediate outrage over Lawrence — a 20-year-old Oscar nominee and an obviously talented actress — was about fidelity; Collins's books enthralled young readers (and the elders who read along with them) because of their precise, horrifying detail. So cue the ever-vigilant Hunger Games fan Tumblr, which monitors casting notices and opines daily about which actors meet the exacting specifications of the source material for the upcoming sequels. They post set photos and analyze costume and makeup decisions. They speculate endlessly about which minor characters will or will not make it into the movie.
And though it is young adults (read: teen girls) who participate most enthusiastically in this online behavior, the Hunger Games phenomenon has overtaken their elders, too. It is hard to find a parent without an opinion on the franchise's violence or a twentysomething female without an opinion on Gale versus Peeta. Most crucially, it is near-impossible to meet anyone who has not seen the movie: The widespread book-to-movie obsession resulted in an astounding opening and toppled all previous Twilight records. Should there be any doubt about continued interest, just consult the fan sites, where a never-ending war rages on about the physical embodiment of Finnick Odair and whether Sam Claflin is fit to play him. (Spoiler alert: He is probably not. But a record number of moviegoers will buy tickets to find out.)
FACEBOOK FOLLOWERS: 7.8 million
TWITTER FOLLOWERS: 657,000
FAN NICKNAME: Tributes
MAIN HANGOUTS: Mockingjay.net, Hunger Games Tumblrs
AVERAGE DEMOGRAPHIC: Female, teen, or teen at heart. Thanks to better writing and kid-on-kid violence, the franchise attracts a wider following than its vampire counterpart, Twilight, but the core audience is still young women.
DEVOTIONAL PROFILE: Mere hours after Jennifer Lawrence was cast as the big-screen Katniss in 2011, the forums were rumbling: She's not skinny enough! She's too fair-skinned! Her hair is (gasp) blonde! The immediate outrage over Lawrence — a 20-year-old Oscar nominee and an obviously talented actress — was about fidelity; Collins's books enthralled young readers (and the elders who read along with them) because of their precise, horrifying detail. So cue the ever-vigilant Hunger Games fan Tumblr, which monitors casting notices and opines daily about which actors meet the exacting specifications of the source material for the upcoming sequels. They post set photos and analyze costume and makeup decisions. They speculate endlessly about which minor characters will or will not make it into the movie.
And though it is young adults (read: teen girls) who participate most enthusiastically in this online behavior, the Hunger Games phenomenon has overtaken their elders, too. It is hard to find a parent without an opinion on the franchise's violence or a twentysomething female without an opinion on Gale versus Peeta. Most crucially, it is near-impossible to meet anyone who has not seen the movie: The widespread book-to-movie obsession resulted in an astounding opening and toppled all previous Twilight records. Should there be any doubt about continued interest, just consult the fan sites, where a never-ending war rages on about the physical embodiment of Finnick Odair and whether Sam Claflin is fit to play him. (Spoiler alert: He is probably not. But a record number of moviegoers will buy tickets to find out.)
From vulture
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