Francis Lawrence revealed that we’ll be seeing less of Philip Seymour Hoffman in “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay” films than initially expected. As the director he didn’t utilize CGI to finish Hoffman’s remaining scenes.
Hoffman had almost completed his turn as Plutarch Heavensbee for the final two installments of the “Hunger Games” franchise, “Mockingjay – Part 1″ and “Mockingjay – Part 2,” when he died on February 2 from mixed drug intoxication. Lawrence said that the creative team shied away from using “digital trickery” to replace Hoffman.
Lawrence talked to Huffpost Live about rewriting the script after production resumed on “Mockingjay” following the actor’s untimely death.
“He had two scenes with dialogue that were left and we decided we didn’t want to try any kind of digital trickery with him, so we rewrote his scenes and gave his dialogue to other actors,” he said. “So there was one scene from ‘Part 1′ and one scene from ‘Part 2,’ so we shot both movies back to back.”
Lawrence said it would have been disastrous to use technology to recreate such a talented actor’s performance. The choice to forgo CGI was an easy one, Lawrence continued.
“He was one of the greatest actors, I think, of all time and I just think to try to fake a Philip Seymour Hoffman performance would have been catastrophic and I would never want to do that,” Lawrence said. “I just think this was the best way to be able to get around such a horrible thing.”
Watch the full HuffPost Live interview with director Francis Lawrence here.
“Mockingjay – Part 1″ opens in theaters next weekend.
