Elizabeth Banks, who plays Effie Trinkett in The Hunger Games films, today confirmed that Mockingjay parts one and two will be penned by Danny Strong.
Lionsgate won’t be happy about this one.
“Right now I’m filming The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, but the powers that be are hard at work adapting book #3, Mockingjay,” Banks wrote on her official website. “Going Twilight-style, the third book will be split up into two movies, both written by Buffy alum Danny Strong.”
“He acts and writes! He wrote the HBO flicks Game Change and Recount, so tight, I can’t wait to see what he does with Mockingjay!”
We’re quite sure that there’s plenty of buzz on set about Strong writing the final two films in the series, but the actors probably haven’t realized that the news has not been formally announced by Lionsgate. Reports of Strong writing Mockingjay first surfaced two weeks ago.
Strong wrote the Emmy Award winning HBO film Game Change and is also writing Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol.
Lionsgate had made the decision in July to split the book, a move which follows closely in the steps of Warner Bros.’ Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, The Hobbit, and Summit’s The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn.
On the matter, actor Woody Harrelson (Haymitch) said, “Well, I think it could work. It really depends on how the scripts come in. I hate to comment on it before I know what it’s going to be. Obviously it’s possible that you can do it but how it’s going to turn out, I don’t know. I’m hopeful.”
Lead star Jennifer Lawrence (Katniss) also spoke about the split last month and had made some joking comments about it. “What I’m really thinking is yacht, yacht. My own island,” she said in regards to the higher pay day. “You want everything in there, but you don’t have enough room, and you’re trying to decide what’s going to get cut and what isn’t. So it was a relief on the last one to know that we don’t really have to cut anything. We have enough time, we have enough room to really tell this story to the fullest, and we don’t need to cut anything.”