Who is the target audience of The Hunger Games?

Lionsgate had the advantage of already having a built in fan base for The Hunger Games, thanks to the success of Suzanne Collins' trilogy books. About 9.6 million books were already in circulation when the film first began shooting. The problem Lionsgate had was the core fan base was made up of female fans 14-25, the lead character is a 16 year old action female and historically movies with a female action lead like Tomb Raider haven't always done well at the box office. Films like Tomb Raider already had a built in fan base too from the video games and completely flopped at the box office. The similarities to the Twilight trilogy also worked at alienating male moviegoers. Lionsgate's strategy was to target their campaign towards young males at the same time not neglecting their pre-built female core audience. Lionsgate Vice Chairman Michael Burns was quoted as saying "We always wanted this as a four-quadrant movie." Meaning it would appeal to boys, girls, men and women, that would be the target audience.

Some promotional strategies that Lionsgate have used to allure men have been opening the film on nearly 300 IMAX screens for a limited time - IMAX cinemas have a much bigger male audience. Also airing a full length trailer of the movie in the ad break during the superbowl in America. The film also apparently plays down the romance aspect of the story and focuses more on the action - this shows the strategy to enlist more males was in the pipeline from the beginning.

I think it was the right thing to target the males as well as females during the marketing campaign, it gives the film more credibility and hopefully wont turn it in to what the Twilight craze has become with it's "Team Edward" and "Team Jacob" girls gone crazy craze! The Twilight movies seem to be getting more critical panning as they continue and I must say I saw Breaking Dawn on DVD the other day and it wasn't good and I can't imagine if that movie was a stand alone and not part of a trilogy if it would have any viewers apart from a female 12-18 year category. 




The fans of Twilight - mainly female

Fans lining up to see first midnights screening of The Hunger Games - males & female

Reference

Barnes, B. Bosman, J. 2012. Hunger Games' book sales bode well for the film. The New York Times Accessed 27.3.2012.http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/hunger-games-book-sales-bode-well-for-the-film/