The Hunger Games director Francis Lawrence regrets dividing Mockingjay into two parts

The Hunger Games franchise is one of the most beloved franchises in the world. The franchise, which starred Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen, came to a conclusion with two separate chapters in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 and Part 2, which released in 2014 and 2015 respectively. In an interview with People magazine, director Francis Lawrence revealed that he regrets dividing the last book into two films. 

Talking about The Hunger Games franchise in a new interview with People magazine, Francis Lawrence said that if he ever had the chance to redo the films now, he wouldn't split Mockingjay into two separate parts. He said, "I totally regret it. I totally do. I'm not sure everybody does, but I definitely do. What I realized in retrospect — and after hearing all the reactions and feeling the kind of wrath of fans, critics and people at the split — is that I realized it was frustrating. And I can understand it."

The director further added, "In an episode of television, if you have a cliffhanger, you have to wait a week or you could just binge it and then you can see the next episode. But making people wait a year, I think, came across as disingenuous, even though it wasn't. Our intentions were not to be disingenuous.... In truth, we got more on the screen out of the book than we would've in any of the other movies because you're getting close to four hours of screen time for the final book. But I see and understand how it frustrated people."

Francis Lawrence is now gearing up for the release of the prequel The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, which stars Rachel Zegler as Lucy Gray Baird. The rest of the cast incudes Peter Dinklage, Hunter Schafer, Josh Andrés Rivera, Jason Schwartzman and Viola Davis. It was released on 17 November.