Numbers keep climbing for 'Hunger Games'

Lionsgate is raising its opening 3-day weekend projection to $95 million from $75 million, reports Deadline, and other estimates run as high as $125 million. They've already sold over a million tickets on Fandango and Movietickets.com.

This movie based on the bestselling trilogy of novels by Suzanne Collins has turned Twilight-like huge for Lionsgate which was badly in need of a franchise. But unlike Twilight which attracted predominantly a female audience, The Hunger Games could attract younger males as well as younger and older females. Exactly how much the studio can gross for the first weekend depends on how many screenings each theater can pack into 72 hours by finding enough staff willing to work the extra hours and keep the pic running continuously.

At the other end of the scale, Disney projects that the flop "John Carter" will result in a $200 million writedown for the current quarter - and that Walt Disney Studios will record an operating loss of $80 million to $120 million. From the NYT:

Analysts pegged the "John Carter" write-down in the $100 million to $165 million range. The larger total reflects poor global reaction to the film after two weekends in theaters; sales total about $184 million, which must be split with theater owners. "John Carter," which was directed by Andrew Stanton and cost $350 million to make and market, will go down as one of the biggest flops in Hollywood history. Attention now swings to Disney's coming movie schedule, which looks quite promising.