With the release of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 only weeks away, director Francis Lawrence has given an interview discussing how The Hunger Games universe could be explored beyond the books, although he did admit that it would be difficult to expand the franchise…
“It’s a tough thing. It’s a weird thing,” says Lawrence. “That world of Harry Potter, there’s a lot to that world that you can explain. You can understand the appeal of telling another story, but can you actually do it without Harry, Hermione and those characters? Will people care as much? And I guess you can say the same thing about the Hunger Games world. There are a lot of past games and a lot of this world, but without Katniss, is it the same? Part of what I like about the series is the connection to things we think about and talk about now. What’s the new version of that? That would be the tricky thing.”
Lawrence also weighed in on how the tragic death of Phillip Seymour Hoffman affected the shoot: “He had two substantial scenes left and the rest were appearances in other scenes. We had no intention of trying to fake a performance, so we rewrote those scenes to give to other actors… The rest we just didn’t have him appear in those scenes. There’s no digital manipulation or CG fabrication of any kind.”
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 is directed by Francis Lawrence and stars Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson, Elizabeth Banks, Stanley Tucci, Donald Sutherland, Willow Shields, Sam Claflin, Meta Golding, Jena Malone, Stef Dawson, Natalie Dormer, Lily Rabe, Jeffrey Wright, Evan Ross, Mahershala Ali, Wes Chatham, Eldon Henson, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Julianne Moore. The film opens on November 21st.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=GFp0D231uNM
Originally published October 29, 2014. Updated April 13, 2018.
