'Hunger Games,' 'Amazing Spider-Man' sequels set far in advance
If the film business is akin to playing poker, two Hollywood studios are making bets on a hand they haven’t yet been dealt.
Lionsgate and Sony Pictures have announced release dates for sequels to “The Hunger Games” and “The Amazing Spider-Man,” two highly anticipated movies that will be released in March and July 2012, respectively. “Hunger Games” sequel “Catching Fire” has been scheduled for November 2013, while the sequel to the “Spider-Man” reboot will hit theaters in May 2014.
Scheduling movies three years in advance — let alone before production has been greenlighted — is unusual but not unprecedented in Hollywood, where claiming prime release dates for tentpole movies has become a fiercely competitive chess game.
With the exception of multi-movie series filmed simultaneously, such as the upcoming pair of “Hobbit” pictures, industry veterans can’t recall studios ever dating the second movie in a series before the first is released. Historically, sequels aren’t scheduled until the first movie proves its box-office mettle.
Because Hollywood studios are relying on big-budget event movies with worldwide appeal for more of their revenue as they produce fewer mid-budget dramas and comedies, none wants to risk missing out on the best release date. As a result, movies are being scheduled further in advance. Aside from two historically slow weekends in early June, the summer 2013 schedule is already full.
“These are aggressive moves, but there are a handful of weekends every year that studios with gigantic movies are gunning for,” said Jim Gallagher, a consultant who was previously president of marketing for Walt Disney Studios. “Lionsgate and Sony are signaling that they will spend whatever it takes to make the first films successes because they are already setting up these franchises.”
“Hunger Games,” based on the bestselling young adult book trilogy, has been hyped as the next “Harry Potter” or “Twilight.” It’s thus no coincidence that Lionsgate scheduled “Catching Fire” on the same date — the weekend before Thanksgiving — that several “Potter” and “Twilight” movies had $100-million-plus openings.




"The studio chose not to give money, but we tried to be as helpful as we could by giving Laura office space and all the technical support she needed to make the event successful," Lynton said when asked about the incident. 





