“Hunger Games” director Francis Lawrence says he wishes he could take back the decision to split the final book into two films.
While speaking to People about “Mockingjay – Part 1” and “Mockingjay – Part 2,” Lawrence said, “I totally regret it. I totally do. I’m not sure everybody does, but I definitely do.”
The decision to split the final book into two movies was announced in July 2012. Part 1 was released in theaters in November 2014 and Part 2 was released in November 2015. To Lawrence, the decision made sense at the time because the “two halves of ‘Mockingjay’ had their own separate dramatic questions.”
Of fans who were frustrated by the delay between movies, Lawrence said, “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.”
The decision to make two movies wasn’t all bad. As the director also pointed out, the film’s team was able to bring significantly more of the book to the big screen, resulting in “close to four hours of screen time.”
The “Hunger Games” team was not the first to turn one book into two movies. “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” was split into two films in 2010 and 2011. After that, “Twilight: Breaking Dawn” spawned two movies, followed by part one and two “The Divergent Series: Allegiant” films.
Luckily for fans who are looking forward to the “Hunger Games” prequel “The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes” will be the longest movie in the franchise to date, clocking in at 2 hours and 36 minutes.
Lawrence added, “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.’”
“The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes” will be released Nov. 17.
