The Hunger Games!

I saw the movie once in theaters and thought it was just about perfect. I'm looking forward to getting my own copy, though I probably won't rush out to get it the day it's released. And yeah, seconding the impatience for the second movie.

 

X-Men: First Class 2 (please let it have a better name) is set to begin shooting January 2013 for a 2014 theatrical release, or so I heard. My understanding was that Catching Fire was being shot now, for a November 2013 release. So I guess Jennifer Lawrence will be busy for a while, shooting back to back Hunger Games and First Class sequels.

And apparently Mockingjay is being split into two movies, one for release in 2014 and one in 2015. I blame Harry Potter for starting this trend and making me shell out double the bucks. <_<

 

The thing is, and I say this with all due love for the book, not a whole helluva lot happened in Mockingjay. I mean, how much time was devoted to Katniss laying around in the hospital wing of District 13 freaking out about Peeta and Gale? And when she eventually got mentally stable enough to do stuff, she still was only just training around with Finnick and Johanna. It's not really until the end of the book when 13 decides to advance on the Capital that there's really any action. So long rambling short, I don't see why, besides money, they would need to split the book into two movies. But then, I see no reason for The Hobbit or Twilight: Breaking Dawn to be split in two either. *shrugs*

According to this source, Mockingjay part 1 will be released November 21, 2014 and part 2 on November 20, 2015. But I assume this is subject to change.

 

The first Hunger Games trailer was attached to Breaking Dawn part 1, if I remember correctly, so maybe we'll get a little something attached to Breaking Dawn part 2 in November. Though hopefully we'll get some photos from the set a little sooner.

 

Money, end of story. Why only make one movie when you can get millions of people to pay for two?

Yes, (or at the least they felt longer) though a lot of pages were taken up with descriptions of the setting and things like that, and the end of Return of the King has a huge appendix with all sorts of relevant backstory and information (or at least my copy did).

But really, for all that the directors or studios might say they're splitting the movies up to try and fit more of the books in, or to make a better adaptation, you can't convince me that it's not about the money.

Peeta's probably my favorite character in the series, and I agree about Josh Hutcherson. He has a kind face that I thought fit Peeta well, and I liked him with Jennifer Lawrence. But my favorite casting was probably Woody Harrelson as Haymitch. We need more Haymitch in the next movie, I don't even care how they make it happen.

 

I agree. They chose actors who resembled their characters well enough, but more importantly, they also chose actors who can act. I immediately bought Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss, Woody Harrelson was a perfect Haymitch, even the guy who played Seneca Crane was great. I don't think there's anyone that I'd recast, though granted some characters like Gale didn't have a whole lot of screen time to judge by. Hopefully that trend continues.

The best reason to go see that movie, if so.

ETA: Lionsgate has revealed that Philip Seymour Hoffman will be playing head gamemaker Plutarch Heavensbee, Jena Malone will be Johanna Mason, and Amanda Plummer will be Wiress. [Source]

 

I'd prefer one really long movie. Even split in two, these epics tend to close in on two and a half to three hours long, so adding another half hour or hour isn't going to make much of a difference to me. And then you get the whole story at once, rather than having to wait one, two years for the cliffhanger to be resolved.

I've long since given up expecting any adaptation to include everything. There's always going to be things excluded or changed to fit the different format, budgeting, and time constraints. Personally, I felt the things that were changed or left out were small enough that they had no real impact on the movie for me. It wasn't like the HP 3 movie which screwed up like everything the book revealed and left me grumbling as I left the theater.