Ah, yes. A tale as old as time. You have a mega-successful film franchise. It’s being adapted from books. You complete the book series. You rake in tons of cash. You want to make more. There are no more books. What to do? 

Looks like Lionsgate is wondering the same thing. Their Hunger Games films have made the studio lots of bank, but with the next two films- Mockingjay: Part 1 and Mockingjay: Part 2– they’ve split up the final book into two, and then they’ll officially be out of source material. Empire caught up with director Francis Lawrence, who discussed the possibility of exploring other corners of the Hunger Games mythology. As we now know, Warner Bros is doing something similar with its Harry Potter IP. Granted, their plans will have some spinoff source material to work with, but Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them will be exploring stories that are devoid of the main characters of the Potter series.

“It’s a tough thing. It’s a weird thing,” says Lawrence, who is directing both parts of Mockingjay after his success with the second film in the series, Catching Fire. “That world of Harry Potter, there’s a lot to that world that you can explain. You can understand the appeal of telling another story, but can you actually do it without Harry, Hermione and those characters? Will people care as much? And I guess you can say the same thing about the Hunger Games world. There are a lot of past games and a lot of this world, but without Katniss, is it the same? Part of what I like about the series is the connection to things we think about and talk about now. What’s the new version of that? That would be the tricky thing.“

A tricky thing, indeed. But if there’s money to be made, and a creative enough pitch, you can bet that Lionsgate will find a way to make it work.

We shall see.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay- Part 1 is due out next month on November 21.

SOURCE: Empire Online