The Hunger Games just did what Fantastic Beasts couldn't: a prequel fans actually want

Tickets for The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping went on sale on October 28, and within a day trackers were throwing around numbers the franchise hasn't seen in a decade. Boxoffice Pro's long-range forecast sits at $55 million to $65 million, and Deadline has it above $60 million. The more aggressive presale trackers, Global Box Office and EmpireCity Box Office, put it over $100 million, and by October 29 World of Reel was citing tracking at $120 million.

The film opens November 20, with early premium screenings on November 18. Francis Lawrence directs his fifth Hunger Games movie, Joseph Zada plays an 18-year-old Haymitch reaped for the 50th Games, and the budget is reported at around $185 million.

Here's what those numbers would mean against the rest of the series:

• The Hunger Games (2012): $152.5 million opening.
• Catching Fire (2013): $158.1 million, the franchise record.
• Mockingjay – Part 1 (2014): $121.9 million.
• Mockingjay – Part 2 (2015): $102.7 million.
• The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes (2023): $44.6 million.

At $103 million, Sunrise on the Reaping beats the last Mockingjay. At the $120 million some trackers are seeing, it's within $2 million of Mockingjay – Part 1.

The franchise that went the other way

Warner Bros. tried this first. The Fantastic Beasts prequels shrank with every film:

• Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016): $74.4 million opening, $814 million worldwide.
• The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018): $62.2 million opening, $654.9 million worldwide.
• The Secrets of Dumbledore (2022): $43 million opening, $407 million worldwide.

Two of the five planned films were never made. David Yates, who directed all three, put it bluntly:

"With Beasts, it's all just parked."

— David Yates, director of the Fantastic Beasts films

Why this prequel works

The difference is the source. Lionsgate is adapting a book millions of people have already read. Warner Bros. built Fantastic Beasts from J.K. Rowling's original screenplays about Newt Scamander, a name Potter fans knew from the cover of a textbook, and nobody was waiting for them. Yates himself said the five-film plan came as "a surprise to most of us."

Sunrise on the Reaping arrived as an event before it was ever a movie. It sold 1.5 million copies worldwide in its first week, and its 1.2 million first-week US sales were triple what Mockingjay managed in 2010. Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes had a book behind it too, but it asked readers to spend time with a young Coriolanus Snow. Sunrise gives them Haymitch, the drunk mentor everyone loved, at the Games that broke him, 24 years before Katniss volunteered.

Sunrise on the Reaping sold three times as many copies in its first week as Mockingjay, the book that closed the original trilogy.

The cast leans into the connection, too. Elle Fanning plays a young Effie Trinket, Jesse Plemons is Plutarch Heavensbee, Ralph Fiennes takes over President Snow, and Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, and Woody Harrelson return from the original films. Where Ballad asked fans to care about a stranger, this one fills in a story they already knew the ending of.

Don't miss: 'Welcome back, Jennifer Lawrence': Hunger Games fans are buying Sunrise on the Reaping tickets for one scene

Ten years after the series ended, the prequel is growing the franchise instead of feeding off it. If trackers are right, the sixth Hunger Games film will open bigger than the fourth and fifth. No Fantastic Beasts film ever opened bigger than the one before it.

Previously we wrote: Even Katniss is Team Gale: Jennifer Lawrence just took the Hunger Games' least popular side