Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games
After months of marketing and hype, The Hunger Games debuted to a record $68 million at the box office on Friday to the predictable delight of hungry fans everywhere.
Given the popularity of The Hunger Games novels by author Suzanne Collins, the new dystopian sci-fi thriller starring Jennifer Lawrence was poised to take the box office by storm in the same manner as Twilight in 2008.
On Saturday, it was no surprise to see headlines like "Hunger Games breaks box office record" or "The Hunger Games has best opening day ever." After the success of The Twilight Saga films, online headlines actually write themselves. And from a news standpoint, The Hunger Games is following the same Twilight Saga template.
Now that The Hunger Games phenomenon is here on film, how long do you think it will be before we see stories about Jennifer Lawrence and actor Josh Hutcherson as a couple? How about rumors about who may or may not be directing the next film in The Hunger Games franchise? Will director Gary Ross be back for Catching Fire or will he go the way of Catherine Hardwicke after Twilight? See, based on the millions of online stories about The Twilight Saga over the past four years, these news stories actually write themselves. Will Dakota Fanning be cast in Catching Fire? And just like the many paparazzi photos of Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart, the tidal wave of Jennifer Lawrence photos is about to rise out of the online ocean.
The point here is this:
After the millions of stories written about The Twilight Saga, The Hunger Games is following the exact same online news formula. It's predictable and unoriginal. Just take a look at weekly box office stories, they're all the same from week to week. Same words, same language, same thoughts just different movies. The same can also be said for creative features. How many Top 5 lists have you seen?
As for news, take a look at the Saturday stories following the debut of The Hunger Games on Google. Now take a look at a similar search for The Twilight Saga movies on Google. From a news standpoint, The Hunger Games should follow the exact same trajectory as The Twilight Saga as far as creative stories. But the interesting thing is: what we'll see written over the next three years about The Hunger Games won't be creative at all. Instead the stories will either consciously or subconsciously recycled from other articles about movies past. Different doesn't necessarily equate to new and original.
One Thursday headline from the New York Daily News read, "The Hunger Games soundtrack poised to hit No. 1 on Billboard." Wasn't that the exact same headline as the soundtracks for Twilight and New Moon? Another headline from the SeattlePi read, "Hemsworth: Hunger Games violence not gratuitous." Is that really any different than a 2010 headline about The Twilight Saga: Eclipse from Hollyscoop, "Nikki Reed on her role in Eclipse: It's pretty violent!" Same "violence" wheelhouse.
Unfortunately, as The Hunger Games picks up even more steam as a franchise over the next few years, fans will be reading the same stories over and over. On the other side, sadly, writers will be churning out the same stories about The Hunger Games as they for The Twilight Saga. On Saturday, other headlines read, "The Hunger Games: What the movie missed about the book," "The Hunger Games may give Lionsgate a windfall," "The Hunger Games or Harry Potter," and on and on. The sad fact is that we've all read these stories before.
Although The Hunger Games is completely different in story and concept, The Twilight Saga inadvertently created a formula when it comes to online news. And it didn't take long for the formula to be repeated so quickly. Is The Hunger Games the next big young adult franchise like The Twilight Saga, or isn't it? Of course it is. And since every outlet on the planet will be looking to grab a piece of The Hunger Games pie (because, like The Twilight Saga, The Hunger Games will be a cash cow for everyone), we're going to see an endless stream of Hunger Games stories similar to what was written over the past four years with The Twilight Saga.
Just don't expect the online stories to be as original as The Hunger Games itself.
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