“Everybody’s Thinking About” More Hunger Games Past Mockingjay – Part 2, Says Francis Lawrence

[SPOILERS AHEAD FOR MOCKINGJAY – PART 2]

One of the darkest and most important moments in Mockingjay comes when Katniss requests that she be allowed to execute the villainous President Snow personally if he’s captured alive. But recent comments from Lawrence, producer Nina Jacobson and screenwriter Peter Craig have suggested that the film adaptation may take a different approach to that scene.

“In [Part 1], Katniss is finally taking on the role as the symbol of the revolution and starting to step up and fight back,” Lawrence said. “But the dramatic question is: Will we get Peeta back?…’Part 2′ is: Let’s go get Snow.” Jacobson further explained that Katniss’ realization that she wants to be the one to end Snow is approached a little more slowly than in the source material:

“For people who don’t know the books, then I don’t want to spoil that for them, but … we wanted to let Katniss arrive [at the demand to kill Snow] a little bit more gradually. What’s happened to Peeta informs that demand.”

Meanwhile, Craig promised that it won’t be all doom and gloom in the franchise’s last outing:

“We knew it was dark, and we looked at what wasn’t dark, and really paid a lot of attention to it. Part of it is there’s a lot of affection between the characters that you can’t always show in moments where they’re fighting in arenas, or when they’re separated from each other. There’s a love story that’s emerging between Katniss and Peeta that is actually really, really sweet at its core. There’s all these characters that have been reunited and genuinely care for each other.”

All in all, it sounds like Lawrence and Craig have their heads in the right place going into Mockingjay – Part 2. Though there’s surely a desire to keep such a lucrative franchise alive past this installment, the people devoting their time and energy to this franchise rightly care much more about delivering a satisfying finale than anything else. We’ll find out whether they succeeded or not when The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 opens on November 20th, 2015.