7) Phillip Seymour Hoffman – The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2
Hollywood lost a great talent when Phillip Seymour Hoffman passed away at the age of 46. For The Hunger Games saga, in particular, his death resulted in the loss of a character who would have had a major role in the final movie, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2.
Hoffman had joined the franchise in Catching Fire as rebel leader Plutarch Heavensbee and had been discussing how to play the character’s big scene at the end of the final movie with director Francis Lawrence just before he died. After his death, filming schedules were revised to allow for shorter days so that the cast could have time to mourn his loss. In the end, only a small amount of digital trickery was used to complete Hoffman’s scenes.
For the aforementioned key moment between Plutarch and Jennifer Lawrence’s Katniss, the filmmakers actually decided not to use any CGI whatsoever. Instead, they went for a much more low-fi solution – they gave the lines to Woody Harrelson’s Hamitch, as he reads Katniss a letter from Heavensbee.