‘Hunger Games’ Director Wishes He Didn’t Split ‘Mockingjay’ Into Two Parts
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If Francis Lawrence could go back in time, he would have kept Mockingjay as one movie.
Lawrence, who is currently directing the Hunger Games prequel, The Ballad of Songbird and Snakes, told People he wishes he hadn’t split the film — based on the book of the same name — into two parts.
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“I totally regret it. I totally do. I’m not sure everybody does, but I definitely do,” he said of releasing Mockingjay Part 1 in Nov. 2014 and Part 2 the following year.
Lawrence said that the team agreed that the “two halves of Mockingjay had their own separate dramatic questions” and different arcs, but he understands why some fans didn’t like that it was split.
“In an episode of television, if you have a cliffhanger, you have to wait a week or you could just binge it and then you can see the next episode. But making people wait a year, I think, came across as disingenuous, even though it wasn’t,” he said. “Our intentions were not to be disingenuous.”
The benefits of breaking the book into two films? Fans got to see much more than was in the book.
“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. But,” he said. “I see and understand how it frustrated people.”
Lawrence directed The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, a prequel based on Suzzanne Collins’ book, which was published in 2020. The film is out Nov. 17.
“I would never let them split the book in two,” Lawrence said about the new film. “There was never a real conversation about it. It’s a long book, but we got so much shit for splitting Mockingjay into two — from fans, from critics, from everybody — that I was like, ‘No way. I’ll just make a longer movie.’ “
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