The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping is tracking an estimated North American opening floor above $80m, Deadline reported exclusively on 6 November, citing distribution sources who put advance sales ahead of Universal’s Wicked and call them the strongest Lionsgate has seen for any title since Covid. Francis Lawrence’s prequel, adapted from Suzanne Collins’s 2025 novel, opens in US and Canadian cinemas on 20 November, including in 3D under the studio’s Meta conversion deal.
Key facts
- Title: The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping (Lionsgate; directed by Francis Lawrence; from Suzanne Collins’s 2025 novel)
- Reported floor: $80m-plus North American opening (up from a $60–70m range the previous weekend), per Deadline’s distribution sources
- Presales: said to lead Wicked and to top Lionsgate’s post-Covid advances, including the run-up to Michael ($97.2m North American open)
- Window: Thanksgiving frame against Disney Animation’s Hexed and Universal/Paramount’s Focker-in-Law, each tracked by Deadline around $40–50m
- Ensemble named by Deadline: Jesse Plemons, Elle Fanning, Mckenna Grace, Joseph Zada, Ralph Fiennes
Presale heat is not box office. Deadline’s update is a trade estimate built on ticket advances and anonymous distributor readouts, not a Comscore weekend actual. Polymarket, which Deadline cites separately, priced a 75% chance of a North American open above $100m at the time of the piece; that is a prediction-market quote, not a studio forecast. For exhibitors and rival distributors, the useful signal is the revision itself: the floor has jumped about $20m in a week on the same reporting channel.
Why Songbirds is no longer the comp
Deadline explicitly retires The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes as a presale comparison. That 2023 prequel, an origin story for Coriolanus Snow, opened to $44.6m in North America after the actors’ strike and finished at $166.3m domestic on a 3.7× multiple, with a B+ CinemaScore against earlier franchise As and A-minuses. Sunrise on the Reaping adapts a newer Collins novel centred on Haymitch Abernathy and arrives without that strike drag, which is why buyers are treating the advance differently even though both films sit in the same franchise and share Lawrence as director.
Wicked remains the cleaner advance benchmark in Deadline’s account: that musical opened to $112.5m after similar front-load worries about a female-driven audience. Lionsgate’s own recent high-water mark in the same report is Michael, which bowed to $97.2m. Crossing either line on opening weekend would reset what exhibitors will pay for the next YA franchise open in the Thanksgiving corridor.
Thanksgiving corridor and what is still unknown
Deadline frames Sunrise on the Reaping as the clear five-day Thanksgiving favourite against Hexed and Focker-in-Law, which it puts in a $40–50m band apiece, and notes the absence of another Wicked-, Moana 2– or Zootopia 2-scale rival in the same holiday lane. The piece does not publish screen counts, advertising spend or a studio-issued forecast. It also does not break out Thursday previews versus the Friday–Sunday core, which will matter when the first actuals land.
Lionsgate has already locked a Meta-backed 3D theatrical conversion for the US run and a later Meta VR Glasses window in spring 2027, which we covered when the 3D and glasses deal landed. Separate Lionsgate quarterlies have leaned on library and Michael deliveries and a greenlit animated John Wick prequel; a franchise open north of $80m would dominate the near-term theatrical narrative for the studio far more than either of those.
Our reading
For North American exhibitors, Deadline’s $80m-plus floor is a booking document, not a result. It tells cinema chains the film is behaving like a holiday event rather than a mid-franchise prequel. The next hard evidence is Thursday-night preview grosses on 19–20 November and the studio’s Friday morning estimate. Until then, treat Polymarket’s $100m line and the Wicked/Michael comps as colour around a single-trade advance story. Outside North America this update says nothing; international day-and-date plans and local floors still need separate reporting.
Related: Lionsgate’s Sunrise on the Reaping 3D Meta deal; Gower Street’s 2026 global forecast; Lionsgate Q2 revenue on Michael.
Sources
- Deadline (Anthony D’Alessandro), 6 November 2026. Exclusive box-office update. Presales ahead of Wicked; best Lionsgate post-Covid advance; ahead of Michael’s $97.2m North American open; $80m-plus floor (up from $60–70m); Polymarket 75% chance of $100m-plus; Thanksgiving comps Hexed and Focker-in-Law; Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes comps retired for presales
- FilmBunch, Lionsgate–Meta 3D/VR release plan (20 November cinema date)