Today, everyone and their aunt is a fan of actress Jennifer Lawrence for some of the most entertaining and iconic roles in the film industry. But when we look back at the time before she became a household name among the Hollywood elites. The actress was mostly seen doing indie and small-scale films.
Her rise to superstardom came when she became the lead actress in the iconic The Hunger Games franchise as she grew in popularity alongside the series. But with such an incredible reputation and success at the box office, it seems like series director Francis Lawrence regrets splitting the last film into two parts.
Francis Lawrence Regrets Splitting The Hunger Games: Mockingjay In Two Parts
While her career in indie and small-scale films was commendable, the first big commercial and critical breakthrough role for Jennifer Lawrence came in the form of The Hunger Games. Popular for playing the role of the lead character Katniss Everdeen in the series, the star witnessed her meteoric rise to the top of Hollywood.
Although the franchise is loved and revered by many to this day, there’s only one complaint that the fans had from the series, and it seems like filmmaker Francis Lawrence has regrets because of them.
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In a recent interview with People, the Red Sparrow director talked about returning to the franchise in the upcoming prequel The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes. Here, he also talked about the reaction of the fans when he decided to split the last film of the series The Hunger Games: Mockingjay into two separate parts.
He said that if he could redo it, he would definitely keep the last installment as one single film since he felt disingenuous to make the fans wait an entire year for the story’s conclusion when the original novel was just a single book. He said:
“I totally regret it. I totally do. 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, and I can understand it. 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, Our intentions were not to be disingenuous.”
Many fans complained that this decision was a simple cash grab to split a series into four different films when it should’ve been a trilogy.
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What Is The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes About?
The original series was well-received by many and remains a fan favorite to this day, but there is still a rich history of The Hunger Games that the audience doesn’t know about. Therefore, the franchise brings us The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes to tell the origin story of what we know and love.
Taking us back in time to when the tyrant ruler of Panem Coriolanus Snow was an 18-year-old young man and the last of his lineage. He’s assigned to mentor Lucy Gray Baird from District 12 for the 10th Annual Hunger Games. With his knack for swordsmanship and political knowledge, he seeks to turn the tide in his favor in the future.
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The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, in cinemas on 17th November 2023.
