The Hunger Games: Catching Fire To Receive IMAX Treatment
Lionsgate announced the sequel to The Hunger Games, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire will get the full IMAX treatment this go around. Director Francis Lawrence will be shooting key scenes of the tournament with IMAX cameras, following the box office success of Brad Bird’s Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol.
The Hunger Games was one of this year’s surprise hits taking in a $678 million box office worldwide. A sizable amount of that gross came from IMAX screenings, so it would make sense for Lionsgate to insure a larger box office take by actually shooting in IMAX rather than blowing up the image.
We’ve seen in the past many films going the IMAX route rather than the 3D route to gain more of the box office. The fifth installment in the Fast & Furious series, Fast Five and the second film in Christopher Nolan’s Batman series, The Dark Knight, both received the IMAX treatment and then benefited from the additional movie ticket cost.
Lionsgate motion picture group co-chairs Rob Friedman and Patrick Wachsberger said of the IMAX treatment to The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.
We are thrilled to continue the productive partnership we enjoyed with Imax on the first installment of The Hunger Games.
Lionsgate will be releasing The Hunger Games: Catching Fire on November 22, 2013. Key cast members from The Hunger Games like Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutchinson and Liam Hemsworth will be returning for the sequel. There were rumors boiling up that Academy Award Winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman would be joining the cast of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire to take on the role of Plutarch Heavensbee, the new head game maker, when the sequel starts shooting this September. These reports have yet to be confirmed by Lionsgate.
