Gary Ross and Jennifer Lawrence talk about the future of The Hunger Games, sequel to shoot soon?

Last Updated on July 23, 2021

I’ll get this out of the way first; the follow news item contains SPOILERS for THE HUNGER GAMES and its subsequent sequels. So if you haven’t read the books and don’t know what happens proceed if you dare.

Director Gary Ross and star Jennifer Lawrence recently spoke to EW about THE HUNGER GAMES and where the future lies. The film is out in less than two months, with Lionsgate having a lot of faith in the film it has greenlit CATCHING FIRE the next instalment. Jennifer Lawrence will definitely be apart of the future films but will Gary Ross? According to EW, he will in fact be apart of CATCHING FIRE!

Gary Ross spoke a bit about Jennifer Lawrence and his faith in her work. “The range in this performance, the emotional terrain that she investigates, the demands of what this role are. It’s such an intensely physical role and an emotional one. She carries the entire movie. To be able to do that at that age is so kind of incredible that I was in a little bit of awe. Do I think she should be nominated? Absolutely.” You heard it right, he thinks her performance is award worthy and I am sure he means more than just an MTV Movie Award.

He also spoke about CATCHING FIRE and his passion for the material. “I love the title Catching Fire because from the moment Katniss was willing to eat the berries, the moment she was willing to give her life for something larger than herself, she set off a chain reaction that was at once bigger than her and also because of her. That’s a very exciting movie to make because you’re seeing the emergence of a leader. It’s the birth of a revolution so it has context that’s larger than just the Games themselves.”

What did Lawrence have to say? “Everything that I love about the movie, and everything that got me to say yes to this movie, was Gary.” Sounds like they had a great working relationship, which is always good.

She commented as on CATCHING FIRE and signing on for a series. “Signing onto the movies I was like, ‘Well, I’ll probably love the first one and then I’ll just want to get the rest of them out of the way. But I can’t wait to start training. As soon as they were like ‘We need to start training in July,’ I was like ‘Woohoo!’ I can’t wait to get back. Though I don’t know if that’s because I think we might shoot in Hawaii.”

There you have it folks, Gary Ross is returning to the directors chair and CATCHING FIRE will shoot this July in Hawaii! This is all very crazy, Lionsgate better hope there is a huge audience for the film. With the following of the books I’d say there is a strong chance this will make some serious money, but we’ll see!