Due on Blu: The Hunger Games

The two-disc Blu-ray of The Hunger Games will be unleashed here on August 17, Roadshow Entertainment announced today.

The Lionsgate release will be the biggest in the studio’s history and include three hours of extras.

The movie has topped $5.7 million locally to become the second-highest-grossing release of the year, second only to The Avengers.

Extras common to the Blu-ray and DVD will include:

❑ the eight-part The World is Watching: Making of The Hunger Games

❑ a conversation with director Gary Ross

❑ shorts about the global success of the Suzanne Collins books, the creation of the control room in the film and the filmmakers’ motivation behind creating scenes that were not in the book.

Unique to the Blu-ray will be Preparing for the Games: A Director’s Process, which explores the progression of taking three key scenes from the book to the screen.

The Blu-ray and DVD will go on sale globally.

“The motion picture event of the year is poised to become the home entertainment event of the year and, with a midnight launch and midnight retail events scheduled at stores around the country, we expect to replicate the same level of consumer excitement generated by the film’s theatrical debut,” Lionsgate Home Entertianment’s executive vice president & general manager Ron Schwartz said in a statement.

“This is far and away the biggest home entertainment launch in Lionsgate’s history and, true to a theatrical marketing campaign that incorporated an unprecedented reliance on digital and traditional media alike, our home entertainment launch will involve a similarly innovative and integrated digital and packaged media rollout that we will unveil in the weeks ahead.”