When you see one of Finnick’s costumes in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, it won’t be as skimpy as was described in the book by Suzanne Collins.
Speaking with MTV, the film’s costume designer Trish Summerville reveals in a new interview that they decided to cover up Finnick more than what’s described in the book during the parade sequence in order to make his appearance PG-13 friendly.
“We went to Suzanne to see if this is something we have a little liberty to change, because in your mind, you can imagine that as grand as you can, but to try to take that on to film, it doesn’t work sometimes,” Summerville says. “What we ended up deciding on was keeping true to the net. It’s a fishing net. It’s made of gold fabric. It’s knitted-together net, and I made him kind of a kilt. It’s more like a gladiator-type skirt, so he has that on, and it’s belted, and he has the shells on his neck, which he keeps the whole time.”
The costume designer says she and Claflin came up with a back story for why he’s always wearing the shells. “My backstory between Sam and I was that Annie — who he had to leave — it’s this necklace that Annie’s made for him so that she’s always with him when he’s away. He keeps it on the whole time … He was really relieved he has a longer skirt, and he kind of has tights underneath and kind of substantial boots. He’s bare-chested, and he worked really hard to get into amazing shape … I think it’s much more interesting than just the net. It would have been a little too Chippendales.”
Readers may recall that in the book he’s only wearing fishing nets (representative of District 4’s fishing job) tied in knots to cover his private areas.
Catching Fire hits theaters two weeks from tomorrow, November 22.