The Hunger Games smashes box office records

As predicted, 'The Hunger Games' movie adaptation was a huge hit on its opening weekend in the US. It took an estimated £97m since Friday, making it the highest grossing non-sequel release of all time.

In overall terms only the 'Harry Potter' finale (£106.6m) and 'The Dark Knight' (£99.8m) have  taken more, and those films were released in the height of the summer blockbuster season.

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'The Hunger Games' has been regularly compared to the 'Twilight' series, but the first instalment of the vampire series made a paltry £44m in comparison to the adventures of Katniss Everdeen.

The next two books in the series will now almost certainly be fast-tracked into production. There is already talk of splitting the final story, 'Mockingjay', into two film, just as producers did with 'Harry Potter' and 'Twilight'.

A note of caution has been sounded, however, by the international performance of the film so far.

Although topping all the charts in the countries where it has been released, the overseas performance is dwarfed by that of its US opening. In fact, 'The Hunger Games' made less than 'John Carter' did at the international box office when it opened on 11 March, an eye-opening fact given that the Disney flick is now considered one of the biggest flops of all time.

Some analysts have predicted that the unseasonably warm weather this weekend could have harmed the attendances at cinemas in the UK.

The book series is less well known outside of the US, so the discrepancy in sales isn't too surprising.

Exit data from US cinemas has shown that 39% of attendees were under the age of 18, and that they gave the film a glowing A+ rating, according to Cinemascore. Those over 25 aren't slamming the film either, giving it an A-, something of a surprise as the film has been heavily marketed to the teen audience.