INTERVIEW: Lionsgate and Director Francis Lawrence talk Filming Locations & Marketing Campaign Plans for 'Mockingjay' Films

Director Francis Lawrence and Lionsgate Team behind the Mockingjay films talked to Variety about filming locations, marketing campaigns, Katniss, Panem, and more.

On their plans for marketing campaigns for the Mockingjay Films 

There will be reveals of the campaign in May at the Cannes film festival and in July at Comic-Con. Until then, Lionsgate is trying to keep specifics under wraps, though director Lawrence allows that the next two films take place in a Panem so devolved as to be barely recognizable. 

“When we started, we decided to look at this as one big movie that’s eight hours long,” notes Tim Palen, the architect of Lionsgate’s marketing effort. “Otherwise, it’s going to be kind of overwhelming to do a new campaign for each movie.”

On the new look at Panem

“We are going to new places,” [Francis] Lawrence promises. “No one’s ever been to District 13, and we have not really been in much of the Capitol, so creating that is the really fun stuff.” 

On the final arena scene in Catching Fire of Katniss shooting an arrow at the dome

“Not since Luke Skywalker shot into the Death Star has one person had that kind of impact in a franchise film,” asserts Lionsgate production president Erik Feig. “What I really love about how (the 23-year-old Lawrence) plays that character is that Katniss is larger than life and yet she wears her emotions in a very relatable way. She’s not a superhero by any stretch — she’s all too human in the face of extreme conditions — and she faces them with the presence of mind that we all wish we had.” 

On the studio's decision of splitting Mockingjay into two films 

The production prexy says it makes sense to go as fast as possible, with the final film, set for November 2015. “It’s always a little bit of jumping off a cliff, but I like having that goal post,” Feig notes. “Here is a date — this is when the movie will be out in theaters. When you don’t have it, there’s a vague existential cloud hanging over it, so a release date makes the theoretical actual.” 

On Filming Locations

Lionsgate has even booked Berlin’s massive Templehof Airport — built in 1927, reconstructed by the Nazis as a symbol of supremacy, and closed six years ago — and huge apartment complexes outside Paris for shooting battle scenes. Feig allows that part of the inspiration came from Stanley Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket,” his cinematic recounting of the 1968 Tet Offensive in Vietnam.

“Kubrick shot the siege in London,” Feig notes. “In a weird way, we love the idea of urban sprawl. So we (looked for) big buildings that have been around forever. We kept coming back to classic war movies, and we started thinking we should look into Europe.

Head over to Variety to read the Full Article.

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