Hunger Games Box Office: Grosses, Budgets and Franchise Total

The Hunger Games box office is $3.01 billion worldwide for the four main films and $3.38 billion once the prequel is added, according to Box Office Mojo. That settles the question of whether there are four or five Hunger Games movies: there are five, made up of four main films and one prequel spinoff. The main films run from The Hunger Games (2012), directed by Gary Ross, to The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 (2015), directed by Francis Lawrence. The prequel is The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (2023), also directed by Lawrence. Lionsgate released the series, and the table gives each film's budget and gross in millions of dollars, rounded to the nearest million.

Grosses are from Box Office Mojo, and budgets come from Box Office Mojo and The Numbers. The Numbers lists a different international total for Mockingjay Part 1, so the Box Office Mojo figure is used throughout. For the full list of titles, see how many Hunger Games movies are there, and for the sequence to watch them in, see Hunger Games movies in order.

Catching Fire (2013), directed by Francis Lawrence, is the highest grossing Hunger Games film, with $870 million worldwide on a $130 million budget. It also led both markets, with $425 million domestic and $445 million international. Behind it, Mockingjay Part 1 took $762 million, The Hunger Games (2012) took $695 million, Mockingjay Part 2 took $684 million and the prequel took $364 million. The first film is stronger at home than Mockingjay Part 1 ($408 million against $337 million domestic), but Mockingjay Part 1 earned far more abroad ($425 million against $287 million), which is what lifts it above the original in the worldwide ranking.

The Hunger Games budget runs from $78 million for the first film to $160 million for Mockingjay Part 2, the most expensive in the series. Budgets for the four main films add up to $493 million, and the prequel's $100 million takes the five film total to $593 million. Set against those costs, the four main films grossed about six times their combined budgets worldwide, and all five films about 5.7 times.

No Hunger Games movie made a billion dollars at the box office. The best single result is Catching Fire at $870 million. The four main films pass $3 billion only when their grosses are added together, and the prequel brings the five film total to $3.38 billion.

The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, also directed by Francis Lawrence, is dated for November 20, 2026 in US theaters and IMAX, according to TheWrap, so it has no gross yet. Its date, cast and trailer are covered on the Sunrise on the Reaping page and in the Sunrise on the Reaping trailer guide.

In my opinion, the clearest pattern in the Hunger Games box office is a peak at the second film, followed by a steady slide in returns while costs went the other way. Dividing worldwide gross by budget (my own arithmetic, from the Box Office Mojo grosses and the budgets above) shows it plainly: The Hunger Games (2012) returned about 8.9 times its $78 million budget, Catching Fire about 6.7 times, Mockingjay Part 1 about 6.1 times, Mockingjay Part 2 about 4.3 times and The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes about 3.6 times. Catching Fire is the biggest earner in dollars, but the first film is the most efficient, and it is the only one that cost under $100 million.

The Mockingjay pair is the most interesting case. The two films together grossed roughly $577 million more than Catching Fire alone. That looks like a win until the costs are added: the two budgets, $125 million and $160 million, sit against $130 million for Catching Fire, so the pair returned about 5.1 times its combined budgets, below Catching Fire's 6.7. It could be argued that two films paid off in raw dollars while diluting the return. Mockingjay Part 2 then grossed about $78 million less than Part 1 while carrying the series' highest budget of $160 million. Perhaps four films in four years asked a lot of audiences, though the figures cannot say that for certain.

The prequel is a different test. Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes arrived eight years after Mockingjay Part 2, with a new young cast led by Tom Blyth and Rachel Zegler and a younger Coriolanus Snow at its center, and it made $364 million on a $100 million budget. That is the lowest gross in the series, yet it still more than tripled its cost, and I would call it a solid result for a story with no Katniss Everdeen in it.

That leaves Sunrise on the Reaping, which opens on November 20, 2026. Without a reported budget, the return test used above cannot be applied yet, but the prequel's $364 million is the nearest benchmark for a film without the original leads. If you want to see how the films compare on story rather than money, Hunger Games movies ranked gives my full order, and the Hunger Games movies hub links every film.