SPKx | 12 Apr 2012 | 808 Views | 3 Likes | 0 Dislikes

Will Gary Ross direct Catching Fire or Won’t He? (Hint: He Won’t)

With The Hunger Games now sitting cosily in theatres with a comfy domestic gross of $300 million (so far), it's time to focus on news of adapting the second chapter of Suzanne Collins' trilogy, Catching Fire.

First, a scheduling problem was resolved last week; Catching Fire is now shooting this fall, freeing up star Jennifer Lawrence to shoot her other big sequel (for X-Men: First Class) in January. Now on to bigger fish: who's going to direct this thing?

One might assume that Gary Ross will return to the director’s chair in order to maintain some stylistic continuity over the series. However, it was announced that Ross was apparently leaving the sequel. Of course, this wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing - not everyone was happy with Ross’ work on The Hunger Games and would welcome a fresh perspective for the sequel. This was done with both the Harry Potter franchise (four directors total) and the Twilight films (a different director each time out).

It was then subsequently reported that Ross is still very much involved with the film and he is working closely with Simon Beaufoy (Slumdog Millionaire) on the screenplay. We finally got confirmation that he was on board!

NOT SO FAST...

After Lionsgate spent so much time assuring people that Gary Ross was still the director of Catching Fire, Ross released his own statement saying that he is indeed gone from the film, crediting, among other things, they very tight schedule he has to work with. And here's Lionsgate’s response:

We’re very sorry that Gary Ross has chosen not to direct Catching Fire. We were really looking forward to making the movie with him. He did an incredible job on the first film and we are grateful for his work. This will not be the end of our relationship, as we consider Ross to be part of the Lionsgate family and look forward to working with him in the future.

For those unable to read between the lines of PR talk, here’s what they're really saying:

How dare you leave the film, Gary? We're on a very tight schedule and finding a new director is just going to waste precious time! Don’t you realize that we have to make this film before Jennifer dyes herself blue again? * SIGH * I suppose if you want to make another film with us you can, but for right now SCREW YOU!!!

UPDATE:
Some of the directors Lionsgate is considering include Alfonso Cuaron, David Cronenberg and Gonzalez Inarritu.

Catching Fire is scheduled to open November 22, 2013.

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