Hunger Games Director Had to Stand His Ground Against Steamy Fan Requests
Hunger Games fans wanted Francis Lawrence to add some adult content, but the director stood his ground till the end: his movies were no place for intimate scenes.
Being a director for live-action book adaptations is tough. On the one hand, not listening to the fans can lead to a proper disaster and turn your movie into one big box office bomb… But on the other hand, as a director, you have your own vision and understanding of how to achieve it. How do you balance this?
When Francis Lawrence, the director of the Hunger Games movies (who is actually not related to his lead actress Jennifer Lawrence, mind you), was making his movies, he was paying attention to the feedback from the fans.
The Hunger Games fan base was already large at the time, and their demands were important to the director.
However, even with Lawrence’s open-minded approach, there were some things that fans desperately wanted that he chose to ignore. The director realized that even though the audience of the books was the backbone of the movies’ success, he had to stay true to his vision of what Hunger Games was about and stand his ground.
“There are definitely ideas that they come up with that we don’t want to do. The ‘everlark’ sex. Where they want Katniss and Peeta to have sex at the end of the movie, have a sex scene. There was no shooting that,” Lawrence told LA Times.
Of course, it wasn’t just the director’s whim: he thought about it and realized that Hunger Games was not about intimate scenes at all. He knew why the fans wanted them but couldn’t give up to their demands on this particular matter to save the films.
“These just aren’t sexual movies. The romance itself too, nobody actually has time to truly think about romance. It’s all sort of situational. It’s about comfort and trauma. [Katniss is] not pining over boys. It’s not like Twilight. <...> I get it in stories like that; in this, it just didn’t make sense,” Francis Lawrence explained.
We can’t help but respect the director’s decision here. Considering how insistent and relentless Hunger Games fans were when it came to romance in this franchise, it’s borderline a wonder that Lawrence managed to stay true to the nature of the books and not give in to the demands. We’re actually lowkey proud of his resilience.
Source: LA Times