Lionsgate Wants Prequels or Sequels To THE HUNGER GAMES
It's a no-brainer that Lionsgate would want prequels or sequels to its massively successful Hunger Games franchise. With the Twilight series completed and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2 set to bring Katniss's saga to a close, the studio will be fresh out of proven moneymakers. Industry analysts have seen the writing on the wall for years, especially after Divergent - The Hunger Games' heir apparent - didn't garner nearly the attention that the studio wanted. But making assumptions is a lot different than hearing the words come out of the studio's CEO's mouth, and that's exactly what happened this morning.
Deadline reports that CEO Jon Feltheimer told analysts this morning that he is “actively looking at some development and thinking about prequel and sequel possibilities” for The Hunger Games films. There's no confirmation that this will actually happen yet, but for the CEO to admit to "actively looking at some development" on it, that seems to imply that the studio has people already working on outlines and pitches for how to continue telling stories in the world of Panem.
Creatively, I'd imagine a prequel would make the most sense: the format is already set up to tell the story of an earlier edition of the Games before Katniss and Peeta come along. But will that be interesting enough to audiences to pull them in, keeping in mind that they won't have the star power of Jennifer Lawrence to lead it? I'm guessing the answer is no. The Hunger Games movies have already worn out their welcome creatively as far as I'm concerned (Mockingjay - Part 1 was so blatantly half of a narrative that it didn't deserve to be called a full movie), but since it's still raking in the cash, Lionsgate likely doesn't care too much about that side of things.
Lawrence is getting busier every year, so the chances that she'd don the bow and arrow one more time to play Katniss again in a sequel seem incredibly slim. We'll have to wait and see how this plays out, but in the meantime, what do you think? Would you be interested in seeing a Hunger Games prequel or sequel? And is this something Lionsgate should be exploring?
