Lionsgate Partially Blames Star Wars: The Force Awakens for The Hunger Games Underperformance

It's tough being Lionsgate right now. That's the bulk of their earnings call yesterday's message. With The Hunger Games franchise ending, that makes one problem crop up for the movie studio: what will replace it? They have 4 extra films next year to try to make up for the franchise, but there's another issue for their stocks, too; the final Hunger Games film, Mockingjay Part 2 did about 100 million dollars less than they expected at the box office.

"I think the combination of circumstances was unique between the terrorist attack in Europe and Star Wars," the co-chairman of Lionsgate's movie arm Rob Friedman said during the call. With Star Wars: The Force Awakens debut a few weeks after the final chapter of the franchise, he said that alone accounts for "somewhere between $50 million and $100 million."

The film also underperformed in China, where Lionsgate blamed their release date and competition with films like The Martian and Spectre, the latest James Bond flick.

In the end, The Hunger Games didn't do as well as it should've last year, which may actually mitigate the loss of the franchise in the near future. They have high hopes for Power Rangers, Now You See Me, and more as ongoing franchises, but the bad news for Lionsgate is that they'll have Star Wars films to contend with for the forseeable future.