Following the massive success of the Harry Potter franchise, which transcended the movie business to become a genuine cultural phenomenon, rival studios around Hollywood rushed to adapt as many YA books as possible in the hope that they could replicate the critical and commercial acclaim that followed J.K. Rowling’s Wizarding World everywhere it went.
The bandwagon may have rolled on for a good few years, but the overwhelming majority of these page-to-screen adaptations ended up as duds, with most of them failing to even make it past the first installment after bombing at the box office. In fact, only two of them managed to even come close to replicating Potter‘s magic as The Twilight Saga and The Hunger Games both were able to find huge audiences of their own.
The latter starred Jennifer Lawrence in the lead, and the actress was clearly much more interested and committed to playing Katniss Everdeen than she ever was as the X-Men’s Mystique, cementing herself as one of the industry’s fastest-rising talents and leading the four installments to a combined box office total of over $2.9 billion.
The series may have drawn to a close half a decade ago with final chapter Mockingjay – Part 2, but prequel The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is already in development with director Francis Lawrence returning behind the camera. And while the appetite for The Hunger Games looks to have significantly dwindled over the last five years, all of the movies are now streaming for free on Tubi.
Whether people have any interest in watching them on an ad-supported platform is an altogether different question, especially when the majority of fans will no doubt already own the entire collection on either DVD or Blu-Ray. But in terms of completely free content, there are certainly worse ways to spend nine hours spread out across a lazy weekend.
