Hunger Games Director “Totally Regrets” One Thing About the Jennifer Lawrence Franchise That Made Lionsgate $1.4 Billion in Box Office Revenue
Jennifer Lawrence’s sci-fi franchise has a decade-long history of resonating with the audience. With its high-octane and compelling performances, the franchise has sparked a cultural impact worldwide, particularly on adults. Over the years, The Hunger Games, with its four iconic films, has achieved staggering success at the box office. Despite its immense cinematic power, director Francis Lawrence is not overwhelmed but rather regrets his billion-dollar flicks.
The director regrets splitting The Hunger Games into two-part movies.
In an interview with People Magazine to promote his upcoming adaptation, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, director Francis Lawrence revealed that he “totally regrets” having split the final book, Mockingjay, into two separate films.
He emphasized that even though the two films have compelling narration and have their separate distinctness, the wait between both made the fans “frustrated.”
“I totally regret it. I’m not sure everybody does, but I definitely do. What I realized in retrospect—and after hearing all the reactions and feeling the kind of wrath of fans, critics, and people at the split—is that I realized it was frustrating”.
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 was released a year after Catching Fire. Part two was released a year later, in 2015. Together, both movies grossed over $1.4 billion, and the second movie became the highest-grossing film of 2015.
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The director says splitting Mockingjay was not intentionally disingenuous.
Considering the immense fanbase of The Hunger Games trilogy and the decision to split the Mockingjay into two separate films, according to Lawrence, the extended gap between the releases heightened the anticipation but also made people frustrated with the delay. He also stressed that the intention behind dividing the book into two separate films was not to mislead or to be “disingenuous”.
“But making people wait a year, I think, came across as disingenuous, even though it wasn’t. Our intentions were not to be disingenuous.”
Even though the choice to divide the final book into two parts sparked controversy among both readers and viewers, in terms of filmmaking, it gave the team extra room to add more of the book content than cut things for screen time. He pointed out,
“In truth, we got more on the screen out of the book than we would’ve in any of the other movies because you’re getting close to four hours of screen time for the final book”.
Despite this reaction, the director emphasized the audience’s frustration and expressed his regret over the decision to split the book into two parts.
Francis Lawrence ensures upcoming The Hunger Games prequel will be a single movie.
Francis Lawrence, who has directed four of the Hunger Games, including Mockingjay, is returning with the fifth installment of the franchise. A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes will be the upcoming prequel based on Suzanne Collins’ 2020 novel, set 64 years prior to the events in the original trilogy. The filmmaker also emphasized that the forthcoming movie will only have one film adaptation.
“I would never let them split the book in two. There was never a real conversation about it. It’s a long book, but we got so much s— for splitting Mockingjay into two—from fans, from critics, from everybody—that I was like, ‘No way. I’ll just make a longer movie.”
Spearheaded by Lawrence, the movie consists of an entirely new cast featuring Tom Blythe as Snow, Rachel Zegler as Lucy, and Viola Davis as the ominous game maker, Volumnia Gaul. Additionally, the film includes Peter Dinklage, Hunter Schafer, Josh Andrés Rivera, and Jason Schwartzman.
A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes will be released in theaters on Nov. 17.
