Hunger Games Smells Money That Isn't There (Yet) – Going for 4 Film-Series

It's stupid, it's gimmicky and it's nothing more than a cash-grab.

But when Warner Brothers announced their plans to split Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows into two separate films, financially-speaking it made sense. That franchise shits money and that move gave the studio more time to build up to the final installment and squeeze out every penny from movie-goers' pockets. The same applies for the Twilight series. Not so much for The Hobbit since the long time-frame between The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King opening to The Hobbit: An Expected Journey and how long that series has been away from the public's eye.

Joining the ranks of those franchises is The Hunger Games, reports Coming Soon. Lions Gate is aiming to turn what was expected to be a trilogy (since it is three books - duh!) into, you guessed it, four films.

Now I happen to think that The Hunger Games will be one of the bigger hits of 2012 whenever Lionsgate opts to release it. It has a March 23, 2012 opening. But it wouldn't surprise if they moved to somewhere higher-profile such as June 29, 2012, a date that will soon be vacated by Star Trek 2 and Relativity Media's untitled Snow White with Tarsem Signh which jumped up to that March a few weeks back.

Even though yours truly does think the money will be there and people will show up. It's not the brightest idea for them to go ahead and admit their intentions to whore your money outta you when the first movie hasn't opened yet and won't for awhile. Might have been a wiser call to hold off on making said plans public.