Twenty-four teenagers fighting to the death in an arena while thousands watch: it sounds like a nightmare on the surface, but is actually the premise of the wildly popular new movie The Hunger Games, which opened Friday, March 23.

Based on the New York Times best-selling series by Suzanne Collins, “The Hunger Games” tells the tale of a post-apocalyptic society and its government’s efforts to control it by forcing each of its 12 districts to volunteer one boy and one girl tribute between the ages of 12-18 to battle each other until only one victor remains. Because of the books’ commercial success, the production company Lionsgate hoped to make much more than the $80 million the film cost to make.

The Hunger Games ended up pulling in $155 million opening weekend, the third highest total for an opening weekend after Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 and The Dark Knight.

Despite the somewhat unsettling basis of the story, many patrons were excited for the release of the movie, particularly fans of the books.

“The books were my favorite of all time,” junior Joey Perkins said. “I know it sounds sick, but I love the idea of whole series and battling to the death.”

This new movie enterprise has seemed to fill the gap in young adults’ interests since the ending of the Harry Potter series and the soon-to-end Twilight series. Lionsgate, whose prior biggest movie making success was Michael Moore’s Farenheit 9/11, acquired rights to the film in 2009. After opening weekend, The Hunger Games became the company’s highest grossing movie.

“I needed something to get into after Harry Potter ended and it was really, really easy to get into ‘The Hunger Games,’” sophomore Lexi Riedel said.

As with most movie adaptations, The Hunger Games was under particular scrutiny to see how well it matched up to the book.

“I thought it was really, really well put together,” Riedel said. “Normally books have so many different story lines and I think [the movie makers] did a really good job of including all the information.”

The cast list for the movie includes the likes of Woody Harrelson, Lenny Kravitz, Donald Sutherland and Elizabeth Banks in the adult roles. The younger roles were filled by Jennifer Lawrence (Winter’s Bone) playing the protagonist Katniss, Josh Hutcherson (The Kids Are All Right) playing her fellow District 12 tribute Peeta and Liam Hemsworth (Last Song) playing Katniss’ lifelong friend Gale.

There are expected to be three more movies made for the series covering the last two books in the trilogy, Catching Fire and Mockingjay.

“I am very excited for [the next movie] because the ending of the first one was more of a transition,” Perkins said. “And they did such a good job with the first one I want to see how the next ones turn out.”