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The Real Legacy of the 'Hunger Games' Franchise - The Atlantic

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In The Atlantic’s January/February 2024 issue, 24 writers imagine what a second Trump term would look like. The series succeeded not because it had a clear political philosophy, but because it understood the power of entertainment above all. Hollywood was never going to stop making more Hunger Games movies. Based on Suzanne Collins’s best-selling dystopian young-adult novels, the first four films released from 2012 to 2015 collectively grossed nearly $3 billion worldwide. They dominated pop culture: Jennifer Lawrence became a bona fide movie star; videos on how to replicate her character’s side braid flooded the internet; the phrase hunger games became shorthand for any kind of intense competition. We saw a wave of copycat franchises—Divergent, The Maze Runner, and The Mortal Instruments, among many, many others—that never reached The Hunger Games level of success. Yet the prequel hitting theaters this weekend, titled The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, is no mere fra

Hollywood was never going to stop making more Hunger Games movies. Based on Suzanne Collins’s best-selling dystopian young-adult novels, the first four films released from 2012 to 2015 collectively grossed nearly $3 billion worldwide. They dominated pop culture: Jennifer Lawrence became a bona fide movie star; videos on how to replicate her character’s side braid flooded the internet; the phrase hunger games became shorthand for any kind of intense competition. We saw a wave of copycat franchises— Divergent , The Maze Runner , and The Mortal Instruments , among many, many others—that never rea

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