I’ll finally be seeing The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 tonight and already I’m happy to learn it’s only 123 minutes long and not some un-godly 146-minute attempt at being “epic” through a lengthy running time alone. Though, I would much rather it be 146 minutes, which just so happened to be the length of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire if they had decided to give us the complete third book in just one movie, after all, it isn’t as if Suzanne Collins‘ story is so complex it needed to be told over the course of two years and four hours, but such is the nature of the blockbuster in the year 2014.
Today a new clip from the movie has arrived as fans begin to line-up for Thursday night screenings as Mockingjay hopes to best Catching Fire‘s $158 million opening a year ago and with 23 fewer minutes I wonder if they can eek one more screening into each day… I don’t think it really matters, I think $165-170 is a sure-thing for this one and perhaps Part 2 can top $200m next year.