‘The Hunger Games’: Director Francis Lawrence shares ‘regret’ of dividing ‘Mockingjay’

Francis Lawrence, the director of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, stated that he now comprehends the differing opinions over the decision to split the last book into two films.

In an interview with People magazine that was made available online on Friday, the director said that if he had to remake the Jennifer Lawrence-starring flicks, he wouldn’t divide Mockingjay into two parts.

“I totally regret it. I totally do,” Lawrence said. “I’m not sure everybody does, but I definitely do.”

He added that the production team had decided at the time that the two halves of Mockingjay, which were released in theatres a year apart, “had their own separate dramatic questions,” creating entire arcs. He did, however, accept the reasons why some fans weren’t too pleased with the lengthy gap between the flicks.

“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,” Lawrence said. “And I can understand it.”

He continued, “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.”

Regarding his upcoming prequel The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, which hits theatres on November 17, Lawrence said it was always the plan to make one film based on Suzanne Collins’ book, which was released in 2020, even if it meant for a longer run time.

“I would never let them split the book in two,” he said. “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.’”