'Hunger' for action? Ads hold back

LOS ANGELES - As anticipation reaches a fever pitch for the big-screen adaptation of "The Hunger Games," opening Friday, a central element is absent from every trailer, television ad and online video: the Hunger Games themselves, in which teenagers fight to the death while their futuristic society watches on TV.

In an unusual and risky strategy, studio Lionsgate has crafted a $45 million marketing campaign that shows none of the titular combat.

The stakes for the Santa Monica company could hardly be higher. "The Hunger Games" kicks off a planned quartet of films that analysts estimate could generate between $800 million and $2 billion of profit for Lionsgate. Failure could cause the company's stock price - which has nearly doubled over the Past six months partly because of expectations for the movies - to plummet.

The odds of a flop are slim, however. Fans of the books by Suzanne Collins, which have been translated into 26 languages and have sold nearly 24 million copies in the U.S. alone, have already snapped up enough tickets to sell out more than 1,000 shows. Pre-release surveys indicate "The Hunger Games" will open to more than $100 million domestically, making it the biggest debut of the year and the first to ever reach such box-office heights while hiding so much of its content.

"If you can get people excited while insinuating that you haven't even shown them the good stuff yet, it's an incredibly powerful notion," said Jim Gallagher, a marketing consultant. "Most films can't afford to play so coy."

"It was important to us to make a faithful adaptation that doesn't soft-pedal the subject matter but is respectful of our audiences," producer Nina Jacobson said. "We wanted to make sure that our movie is not guilty of the crimes of the Capitol," she added, referring to the elites in the books who organize the Hunger Games to entertain an oppressed populace.

A staggering 84 percent of moviegoers said this week that they had heard of "The Hunger Games," and 61 percent said they were definitely interested in seeing it. Both figures have grown in the Past two weeks, indicating that the title is only now coming onto some people's radars.

Some of them could be surprised by the movie's violent content, particularly if they bring children. At last week's world premiere, sobs could be heard throughout the theater at one character's particularly tragic death.