Lions Gate Braces for Life After Hunger Games

Lions Gate Entertainment, the largest independent U.S. movie studio, made its name adapting young adult novels into films, including the vampire romance series Twilight and the Divergent sci-fi movies. Now, with the fourth and final installment of its Hunger Games series opening on Nov. 20 in North America, the studio finds itself without an obvious replacement at a time when multifilm franchises have never been more important to Hollywood. “It’s kind of an end of an era,” says Jeff Bock, senior box-office analyst with industry researcher Exhibitor Relations. “There really isn’t a next-in-line yet.”

Investors got a taste of that uncertainty on Nov. 9, when Lions Gate reported a surprise loss after its Vin Diesel movie, The Last Witch Hunter, bombed in theaters and forced it to quickly write down the clunker. The next day two companies in cable billionaire John Malone’s empire, Liberty Global and Discovery Communications, agreed to buy 6.8 percent of the studio. That added to the speculation that Lions Gate—which has a growing television business, producing shows such as ABC’s Nashville and Netflix’s Orange Is the New Black—could find itself at the core of a media content consolidation by Malone.