‘Songbirds and Snakes’ Nabs $44 Million Opening

Director Francis Lawrence tried as best as he could to make a good movie out of “Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes”— the end result was a decent effort which could have easily snipped 30 minutes out of its unnecessarily lengthy 160 minute runtime. All of this to say that ‘Songbirds and Snakes’ came in at $44 million this weekend. This result is below expectations as it was originally projected to hit $50 million. The last ‘Hunger Games’ movie — Mockingjay: Part Two’ — had an opening weekend of $100 million in 2015. Rachel Zegler isn’t Jennifer Lawrence, that’s for sure.