After the “Divergent” series came to an unceremonious end when the first half of its would-be two-part finale, “Allegiant,” bombed at the box office and the final film was scrapped, you would think Hollywood might be a little more hesitant to green-light any more two-part adaptations. Yet, that hasn’t been the case, with Denis Villeneuve adapting “Dune” into a pair of films and even Jon M. Chu’s upcoming “Wicked” musical adaptation getting split in half. Admittedly, it’s worked out nicely for “Dune,” but after the response to “Mockingjay,” Francis Lawrence isn’t taking that risk with his “Hunger Games” prequel, “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.”
Regarding his decision to split “Mockingjay” into two films, Lawrence confessed, “I totally regret it. I totally do. I’m not sure everybody does, but I definitely do.” Looking back, he appreciates now why this was “frustrating” for so many:
“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.”
As I mentioned earlier, the “Mockingjay” films each have their own self-contained narrative arc, and as Lawrence put it, “their own separate dramatic questions,” so in that regard splitting them up was arguably justified in a creative sense. “In truth, we got more on the screen out of the book than we would’ve in any of the other movies because you’re getting close to four hours of screen time for the final book,” Lawrence added. “But I see and understand how it frustrated people.”