It’s rare that a screenwriter will talk about his work on a film this early on in the process, so you should enjoy this interview with Catching Fire screenwriter Simon Beaufoy who says he’s already submitted the first draft!
“It’s very, very different from the way I normally adapt which is to read the book twice and then put it to one side,” says Beaufoy, who has already submitted his first draft for Catching Fire. “You can’t do this (with Catching Fire) because you’ll get firebombed by the fan base. I never see changing a novel a lot into a screenplay is disrespect at all really to the novel or the novelist. I see it as the opposite. You are making something different. And to do that you have to be quite free with the material. I had many concerns with taking on Catching Fire because my usual approach is to be very free. But what I hadn’t realized was that Suzanne Collins used to be a TV writer and film writer. She sort of adapted it already. The novels are very filmic structurally already. Luckily I haven’t had that battle in my head where I thought I had to discard everything, which is good because the fan base is incredibly loyal to everything.”
We’re glad to hear he’s so aware of the importance of keeping the fans happy!
We learned in January that Beaufoy and director Gary Ross were assigned to the project.
Thanks to Mockingjay for the tip.
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