Lionsgate Looking For New Hunger Games Writer
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There are still 127 days to go until Lionsgate’s highly anticipated adaptation of The Hunger Games hits the big screen (there’s a neat motion poster with countdown clock over at HungerGamesMovie.com), and the promotional campaign is in full swing. Studio officials are giving interviews about how expensive the film is and how much they are banking on it. A whole mess of posters featuring characters and Districts have been released. This week, the first real trailer for The Hunger Games, appropriately, set the internet all ablaze. Lionsgate is obviously hoping that all the excitement over the trailer is going to translate into a big box office for the film, and Deadline reports that they’ve already started seeking a writer for its sequel.
The potential scribe is Simon Beaufoy, who won an Academy Award for Slumdog Millionaire in 2009 and also wrote 127 Hours and The Full Monty. Originally, Hunger Games director Gary Ross (who is returning for the second film, according to Deadline‘s sources) was going to pen the sequel in the same fashion as the first film: Ross would write the outline, then script most of it together with Suzanne Collins. Post-production on The Hunger Games has made this too difficult, though, which prompted Ross and the potential trilogy’s producers to start going after Beaufoy. Apparently, everyone involved is excited about the idea of bringing Beaufoy onboard, but no official offer has been made.
Beaufoy clearly has experience with scripting desperation and certain forms of violence for the big screen, so maybe he’ll fit well with the world of The Hunger Games trilogy. The middle film in a trilogy is often the awkward stepchild of the better known or loved films, so it’ll be interesting to see what the creative team puts into Catching Fire to keep it from falling into that trap. That is, if the trilogy makes it past the first film at all.
