Francis Lawrence

As The Hunger Games saga reaches its ends, it’s looking back to its beginning.

With The Hunger Games franchise coming to an end, Catching Fire and Mockingjay director Francis Lawrence has been lining up some ambitious new projects. In addition to re-teaming with Lionsgate for a franchise based on The Odyssey, Lawrence is also working on an adaptation of Red Sparrow, which may see him reuniting with Hunger Games star Jennifer Lawrence.

With Hugh Jackman hanging up his Wolverine claws fairly soon, the actor is seeking non-X-Men-related films for the near future. His next project could very well find him stepping into another major franchise role, as Jackman is currently in talks to headline The Odyssey for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay director Francis Lawrence.

If the title Red Sparrow seems familiar to you, that’s because directors like David Fincher and Darren Aronofsky were previously interested in directing the film, which should give you an indication of the project’s tone. The latest name drawn to the film is Francis Lawrence, director of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and Mockingjay.

For four years, one of the hottest tickets at every Comic-Con was The Hunger Games panel, spotlighting the hugely popular film franchise about the adventures of Katniss Everdeen and the people of Panem. On Thursday, the cast and crew of The Hunger Games franchise — director Francis Lawrence, producer Nina Jacobson, and stars Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, and Willow Shields — took the stage at Hall H one last time to discuss this fall’s conclusion of the Hunger Games saga, Mockingjay — Part 2.

Director Francis Lawrence and producer Nina Jacobson have proven themselves to as an excellent team — Lawrence directed The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, along with both parts of Mockingjay, with Jacobson producing for Lionsgate. And now the pair are teaming up again for another possible hit franchise, this time based on a classic piece of literature: The Odyssey.

ScreenCrush’s WookieeLeaks is a weekly roundup of everything Star Wars! From Star Wars: Episode 7, to the upcoming spinoffs and the TV shows, if it pertains to that long ago, far away galaxy, we’re covering it here, bringing you our expert analysis. This week, the details on four upcoming books are revealed, a few directors are apparently in contention for Star Wars: Episode 9, and Star Wars: Rogue One finds a composer.

Now that James Cameron has promised that the new ‘Avatar’ movies will make you “sh– yourself,” he’s going to be pretty busy for the next few years trying to make sure the sequels live up to that very, um, specific hype. And since he’ll be preoccupied, he’s stepped down from directing true-life drama ‘The Dive,’ passing directorial duties off to ‘The Hunger Games’ director Francis Lawrence. As it turns out, another Lawrence is now involved in ‘The Dive’: Jennifer Lawrence will reunite with her ‘Hunger Games’ director to play the lead in the upcoming project.

The penultimate entry into the sprawling and blood-stained 'Hunger Games' franchise takes a decidedly hip and totally en vogue approach to its final two movies—splitting one (relatively slim) novel into two feature films, all the better to dive deeper into the burning revolution headed up by a reluctant Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence), further explore the various districts that make up Panem, and just make piles of cash in the process. ‘The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part I’ might be half a story (and our review says as much), but it's pretty remarkable that screenwriters Danny Strong and Peter Craig were able to squeeze out an entire 123-minute feature film from 187 pages of a single novel (yes, we counted).

‘The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1’ is a movie comprised almost entirely of deleted scenes. As it says right in the title, this isn’t the final chapter of ‘The Hunger Games’ series; it’s just the first half of the final chapter, and that’s exactly what it feels like. It’s table setting for a meal that won’t be served until next November. ‘Mockingjay - Part 1’ is good-looking, well-acted, and utterly inessential.