Director Francis Lawrence, screenwriter Peter Craig, and producer Nina Jacobson spoke to BuzzFeed News about adapting the final installment of Suzanne Collins’ best-selling franchise. MAJOR SPOILERS!
Warning: The following story contains MAJOR SPOILERS for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1.
Jennifer Lawrence in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1.
Murray Close / Lionsgate
When screenwriter and author Peter Craig (The Town) first got the call about adapting Suzanne Collins' best-selling novel Mockingjay — the culmination of the wildly popular Hunger Games series about reluctant revolutionary Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) — into two feature films, he dropped the phone.
His shock could have been due to the daunting task of transforming Collins' darkest and most psychological novel into a global commercial blockbuster, or having to artificially split the book's narrative into two franchise-extending movies. Instead, the reason was much more straightforward.
"I have daughters," he told BuzzFeed News in his first major interview about The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1, which opened worldwide this weekend. "Both [are] massive fans. Like, my oldest daughter actually took up archery — a crazed Katniss fan, basically." Before his first meeting with the film's producers to pitch himself for the job, Craig even ran one of his ideas — breaking from Collins' book to depict part of the Panem rebellion in the lumber-generating District 7 — by his daughter's carpool. "They were really into it. 'Yeah yeah yeah, Dad, do the tree thing!'"
Producers Jon Kilik, Nina Jacobson, author Suzanne Collins, and screenwriter Peter Craig at the Los Angeles premiere of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 on Nov. 17, 2014.
Kevin Winter / Getty Images
His daughters steered him in the right direction. Craig got the job as Mockingjay's primary screenwriter, when Danny Strong (Lee Daniels' The Butler) moved on after writing the first drafts. And Craig's idea about District 7 was just the first of several significant changes from Collins' book that he integrated into the films, along with director Francis Lawrence (who also helmed the second film in the franchise, Catching Fire), producer Nina Jacobson (who first optioned the rights to Collins' novel), and Collins herself.
Craig, Lawrence, and Jacobson recently spoke to BuzzFeed News in a series of phone interviews about the complicated process of adapting Mockingjay – Part 1 — meaning that the rest of this story contains several MAJOR SPOILERS for the film, even for those who have read Collins' novel.
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How The "Hunger Games" Team Brought "Mockingjay – Part 1" From The Page To The Screen