• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, February 2, 2012

With the movie premiere of “The Hunger Games” set for March 23, Hollywood is probably hoping the film version of the wildly popular young adult novel will also be a huge hit. So is Funtactix, the company behind the forthcoming social game based on the book, which is timed to launch on Facebook in tandem with the movie.

“The Hunger Games Adventures” is set in Panem -- the post-apocalyptic world in which the “Hunger Games” trilogy by Suzanne Collins unfolds. Players explore this world and complete missions that take them to each of the Districts and other fictional areas, where they interact with characters from the book.

“Hunger Games” will be a free-to-play game that makes money by allowing fans to purchase virtual goods to enhance in-game play. That’s the same model used by Zynga and other game developers on Facebook.

This isn’t the first movie-based social game for New York-based Funtactix. Last year, it released titles in connection with Paramount Pictures’ “Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol”  and the computer-animated “Rango.”

According to the blog Inside Social Games, the “Mission Impossible” game on Facebook peaked in early January with 600,000 monthly active users, but has since dropped off to about 260,000 monthly and 8,000 daily users. Given that the “Hunger Games” novel already incorporates immersive, fantasy game elements, an actual game based on the book could prove the company’s biggest release to date.

"Suzanne Collins' amazing novel delivers an unbelievably detailed world that completely immerses the reader. Fans want to enter this world, interact with the characters and truly become a part of it,” said Funtactix CEO Sam Glassenberg. The film itself is already generating plenty of buzz that could carry over to the game.

Lionsgate Films President Joe Drake recently told The Hollywood Reporter that the trailer generated 8 million views online after its Nov. 14 launch and become the top trending topic on Twitter. Book sales have also jumped 7.5 million copies since then.