When Suzanne Collins wrote The Underland Chronicles, five books of Epic fantasy, she showed her potential. The genre’s fans praised the series, which were just a stepping stone for the American author. The last part of Gregor’s adventure in the hidden land of New York was published in 2007.

Just a year later, a new sci-fi wonder was born. Collins polished every detail of the story while mixing the modern cable TV reality show, Greece mythology, gladiatorial games and Vietnam War. Scholastic house, the American publisher of Harry Potter and Star Wars books, brought the rights of The Hunger Games in 2006 for reported six-figure sum.

The launch of the book wasn’t so impressive. The publisher started carefully with just 50 000 hardcover copies printed at the official release of The Hunger Games at September 2008. The numbers grew each month reaching the astonishing 17.5 million copies up to March 2012.

The second and third part of the trilogy Catching Fire and Mockingjay added more impressive figures. Before the release of the first movie episode in the spring of 2012 Scholastic reported of having printed a total of 26 million copies of all three books. Amazon announced that Suzanne Collins is the best-selling Kindle author of all time. She was the sixth writer, who sold more than a million e-book copies.

The Hunger Games and its sequels won many critical awards like Publisher Weekly’s best book of 2008 and Kirkus young-adult book of 2008. The novel stayed for more than 100 weeks in a row at New York Times best-selling list, and 135 consecutive weeks at USA Today chart. The Amazon reviews averaged 4.6 stars out of five from 23 000 plus opinions for The Hunger Games and 4.7 for the trilogy set.

After the initial success of The Hunger Games book one, Lions Gate entertainment and Color Force made a joint venture to acquire movie rights in March 2009. The big studio was suffering from lack of hits in the recent years. They decided to bet heavily on Suzanne Collins’s story. The total budget was set for $78 mil.

Collins agreed to remake the story to a screenplay. She received help from Billy Ray (Hart’s War). Academy awards nominee for Seabiscuit Gary Ross sat at the director’s chair. Jennifer Lawrence was the perfect selection for Katness Everdeen. With another solid cast as Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Lenny Kravitz, Woody Harrelson, Elizabeth Banks, Donald Sutherland and Philip Seymour Hoffman the movie had all the qualities to top the box office. And it did it.

The USA premiere of the movie was in March 2012. $67.3 million were gathered in the first 24 hours of the release. It was the tenth-highest opening-day of all time. The total earnings were $691 million, almost nine times more than the budget.

Rotten Tomatoes showed respect to the production with average 7.2/10 rating. Metacritic scored 67 out of 100 points. The people’s voice at IMDB showed 7.3/10 valuation.

The path for the following sequels was open. The second part Catching Fire was released in November 2013 with some new faces. Francis Lawrence directed the movie, while the screenplay was co-work between Simon Beaufoy and Michael deBruyn. With almost doubled budget of 130 million, the box office was even better than the opening episode – $865 million. Smelling the big money Lion s Gate and Color Force split the final Mockingjay on two parts. The first one was released in November 2014 with $125 million budget and $751 millions box office. The other will be released on November 20 2015, a guaranty money in the bank.

Check out Suzanne Collins books

The Underland Chronicles
The Hunger Games, book 1 of The Hunger Games
Catching Fire, book 2 of The Hunger Games
Mockingjay, book 3 of The Hunger Games

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