‘Hunger Games’ Team Won’t Make Finnick and Haymitch Prequel Films Without Author Suzanne Collins: ‘I Will Always Want to Follow Her Lead’
variety.comZack Sharf Digital News Director “The Hunger Games” film franchise is returning to the big screen after an eight-year hiatus with the upcoming release of “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes,” a prequel film starring Rachel Zegler as Lucy Gray Baird and Tom Blyth as a young Coriolanus Snow.
With one prequel down, Entertainment Weekly asked franchise director Francis Lawrence — who has helmed every installment except the first — and producer Nina Jacobson about making more, perhaps centered on fan-favorite characters such as Finnick (Sam Claflin) and Haymitch (Woody Harrelson).
Their answers were similar: Only if author Suzanne Collins lays the groundwork. “I liked being part of the series originally because the stories are great,” Lawrence said. “But what was always gratifying was that they were always about something.
Suzanne [Collins] always writes from a thematic foundation. The original ones were all about the consequences of war. [‘Songbirds and Snakes’ is] about the state of nature.
