Helen Lee-Kim and Lionsgate’s $1 Billion ‘Hunger Games’ Bet
Observer ·
The Hunger Games has grossed $3.3 billion across five films without one entry reaching $1 billion. With ‘Sunrise on the Reaping’ arriving Nov. 20, here’s what Hollywood’s post-COVID billion-dollar hits say about the job Helen Lee-Kim has ahead of her.
Helen Lee-Kim sold the first Hunger Games film to the world in 2012. Fourteen years later, as president, international, of Lionsgate Motion Picture Group, she has lined up many of the same partners—Leonine in Germany, Metropolitan Film in France, Notorious in Italy—for The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping , out Nov. 20 with Jennifer Lawrence back in some fashion.
Lionsgate’s Hunger Games franchise has grossed more than $3.3 billion combined across five films. Yet no single entry in the dystopian series has ever surpassed the vaunted $1 billion worldwide mark. Lionsgate finally got there this year with Michael , the studio’s first billion-dollar release, but Universal Pictures International, led by Veronika Kwan Vandenberg, handled that film in most overseas markets. Sunrise is Lionsgate’s shot at reaching the mark through Lee-Kim’s own international network.
A longtime lieutenant to Lionsgate Motion Picture Group chair Joe Drake, Lee-Kim handled international sales on the original Hunger Games, left the studio in 2012 and returned in late 2017. For Sunrise on the Reaping , she has struck a number of international distribution agreements with established partners such as Leonine in Germany, Metropolitan Film in France, and IDC in Latin America—most of which also handled 2023’s The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes , and several of which have been with the franchise since 2012. Because Lionsgate licenses its films to local distributors in most overseas territories rather than releasing them itself, the terms Lee-Kim negotiates determine how much of any international windfall flows back to the studio.
The franchise boasts blockbuster potential as a microcosm for Hollywood’s worldwide business model, but times have changed since The Hunger Games first marched into multiplexes. The rise of streaming, COVID’s disruption of the movie business and the growing development of local-language production have all created new challenges. The real question is if it’s also changed Hollywood’s formula for global $1 billion grossers, and what that means for Lee-Kim’s odds.
Observer compared the Hollywood films that earned at least $1 billion worldwide in their original theatrical runs released from 2015-2019 versus 2022-2026 (through November 4), excluding re-releases and not adjusting box office revenue for inflation. Observer also excluded the COVID-impacted 2020-2021, as well as non-Hollywood films.
What resulted was not the wholesale change originally expected. At 38.5 percent, the average billion-dollar post-COVID film generates slightly more of its worldwide gross domestically (U.S. and Canada) than pre-COVID’s 36.4 percent. Such a slight bump doesn’t fundamentally alter the $1 billion grossing formula.
Using the median domestic share instead yields a somewhat bigger result. This metric jumped 5.5 percentage points, from 34 percent to 39.5 percent. This means the typical billion-dollar film today is a bit more reliant on domestic audiences, but what’s more interesting is how the dynamic between the two metrics has flipped.
Pre-COVID, average domestic share was slightly larger than median, driven by a handful of unusually large domestic grossers that pushed up the average ( Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Black Panther ). Over the last five years, the median domestic share has exceeded the average, indicating that a few internationally skewing outliers are bringing the latter down.
Weighting it all by revenue, AKA combining the domestic share of every single dollar these movies earned, yields the smallest change of all: 36.2 percent to 37.6 percent. This is where curve-wreckers like Avengers: Endgame ($2.79 billion) and Spider-Man: Brand New Day ($2.51 billion) contribute the most forceful impact.
What does it all mean? Essentially, the middle-of-the-pack billion-dollar blockbusters are earning more in North America than pre-COVID. Think Barbie ($1.44 billion worldwide) and Deadpool & Wolverine ($1.33 billion). Meanwhile, the Tier 1 grossers such as Avatar: The Way of Water ($2.33 billion) and Zootopia 2 ($1.87 billion) still draw massive money overseas. Even Lionsgate ’s Michael ($1.03 billion) leaned international, earning roughly 64 percent of its gross overseas, most of it through Universal’s distribution operation rather than Kim-Lee’s partners. International ticket sales still account for more than 60 percent of worldwide revenue among envy-inducing 10-figure hits.
Overall, it’s a modest difference between now and then, especially compared to the next variables.
In the 2010s, China was on pace to overtake the U.S. as the world’s largest box office market. The Middle Kingdom emerged as found money for spectacle-driven tentpoles, and was capable of single-handedly propping up costly misfires. The fortunes of Terminator: Genisys (26 percent), Pacific Rim (27 percent) and Warcraft (51 percent) were somewhat salvaged by drawing huge portions of their gross from Chinese theaters. Conversely, the market powered Marvel and the Fast & Furious franchises to new heights.
But due to tightening governmental regulations, shifting audience preferences and increased homegrown competition, China has become a far less consistently reliable market for Hollywood. It still has a tantalizingly high ceiling, as Zootopia 2 ’s $651 million gross shows. But, as Spider-Man: No Way Home ’s $1.9 billion gross without a Chinese release also showed, the market isn’t necessary for every breakout phenomenon.
Setting China aside, have other overseas hotspots changed at all?
How often a given market ranks among a qualifying film’s top five box office contributors (excluding the U.S.) speaks volumes. And as it turns out, many of the markets remain the same, though the hierarchy has evolved over time.
The U.K. is the most consistent, appearing in the top five for 96 percent of pre-COVID $1 billion-plus films and 94 percent of post-COVID films. No wonder they’re our closest ally. France enjoyed the most pronounced surge from 44 percent to 94 percent, followed by Germany’s jump from 48 percent to 75 percent. Australia popped up a bit (+6 percentage points) while Mexico remained steadfast (+4 percentage points). Japan dropped from 67 percent to 50 percent while Brazil tumbled even further from 41 percent to 19 percent. South Korea recorded a more modest dip (-6pp). (Reminder: this is measuring how frequently a given market ranks among the top five highest-grossing non-U.S. countries for a $1 billion-plus hit. This isn’t measuring the change in the country’s overall box office revenue.)
Bottom line: Established foreign markets remain vital for the continued march toward $1 billion at the worldwide box office. That’s good news for Lee-Kim: her partners Leonine and Metropolitan Film hold the Sunrise rights in Germany and France, two of the three markets that have become near-automatic top-five contributors. But more notable shifts have been seen in these standout destinations, compared to the relatively static domestic/international splits.
This leads into our final question: have the types of films that go on to gross at least $1 billion changed materially?
Though individual U.S. theater ticket sales have been declining since 2002 , ticket price inflation helped the domestic box office surpass $11 billion every year from 2015-2019. In that span, billion-dollar grossers were largely concentrated in familiar foundations: Kevin Feige ’s Marvel (7), Kathleen Kennedy ’s Star Wars (4), Pixar (3), Disney live-action remakes (3), Jurassic World (2) , Fast & Furious (2) , Disney animation (2), Universal animation (2), and DC (2).
While still concentrated, the post-COVID club has a few new members: Globally recognizable IP/cultural figures (3), Marvel (2), James Cameron ’s Avatar (2), Pixar (2), Disney animation (2), video game adaptation (2), Top Gun (1), Disney live-action remake (1), Jurassic World (1).
Long-running franchises remain common launch pads for the most successful films. But Illumination founder Chris Meledandri ’s two animated Super Mario Bros. movies , made with Nintendo , demonstrate the continued commercial viability of the family-friendly video game adaptation ( A Minecraft Movie just barely missed the cut at $960 million). Greta Gerwig ’s Barbie , Christopher Nolan ’s The Odyssey and Antoine Fuqua ’s Michael are all atypical IPs to a degree, but with worldwide recognizability and fandoms. (It doesn’t hurt that Nolan has become a franchise draw unto himself). Michael also proved Lionsgate can clear the bar; the open question is whether it can do so without a major studio handling the overseas run.
Familiar franchises—sequels, prequels, reboots, remakes, and spinoffs—still rule the day. But we’re starting to see some more variety in the origin of top grossers.
From 2015-2019, an average of 5.4 Hollywood films grossed $1 billion-plus at the box office per year. From 2022 to early November of this year, that number has dropped to just 3.2.
Barring a cataclysmic failure, we can reliably expect Avengers: Doomsday to exceed the mark. The jury is still out on other contenders such as Dune: Part III and The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping . Established IP and strong overseas distribution are key components for most members of this club; Sunrise has the first, and Lee-Kim has spent more than a decade building the second. While China has become a bit of a dice roll, the U.K., France and Germany appear to be must-have territories. Those are exactly the markets where Lee-Kim’s partners will need to overdeliver. If Sunrise crosses $1 billion, it would be the first Hunger Games film to do so, and the first billion-dollar run built on her own international network rather than a rival’s.
To answer our original question: no, Hollywood’s formula for billion-dollar blockbusters hasn’t changed all that much since COVID. Instead, the difficulty in reaching such heights is the real transformation. It now requires a bit more buy-in from North American audiences on average and some shifting of international priority markets. Familiar franchises are still your safest bet, yet the occasional non-traditional IP with sound foundations can break through.
For all future would-be blockbusters: may the odds be ever in your favor.