So What's Coming Up in 'Mockingjay'?

Catching Fire may still be new to the box office, but that doesn't mean we aren't already looking forward to what's next for the trilogy. If you've already seen Catching Fire, then it is time to look forward to the final Hunger Games book — and the final two movies that it will become. Along these lines, both producer Nina Jacobson and director Francis Lawrence have been talking Mockingjay , so here's what we know so far:

• Julianne Moore's President Coin will have a bigger role than in the books, according to an interview Jacobson did with Indiewire.
• The tragic Peeta stuff will not be skirted, according to Lawrence in an interview with Wired: “Obviously if you know Mockingjay, you know stuff is done to Peeta and so there’s a lot more exploration of that.” We'll be sobbing from here to next year.
• And here's what Lawrence said about the ending: “The ending of the book and the book itself is just really important to me,” he said. “I will just say that we’re making the book. But because we are splitting it into two there’s room for world growth. I don’t want to give anything away or anything, but we’re being very true to the book.” So that basically means everything is going to be sad and depressing. Yay!

As for the currently-in-theaters Catching Fire, Jacobson's Indiewired interview also included some interesting talk of the thought she and the other producers had behind that controversial Capitol marketing campaign:

We talked about this a lot from the beginning. Suzanne Collins and [Lionsgate's Chief Marketing Officer] Tim Palen have a very, very open relationship — communicative and candid. Tim has always said, Above all, do no harm. I think that what we found was that there was a way to have this sort of meta campaign: a campaign for the Capitol. The way that I look at it is, we as filmmakers always try in our storytelling [to] identify with the districts. Katniss represents the districts, the poorest of the poor. As a nation, we have plenty of Capitol in us. That gap that exists between the districts and The Capitol — between the 99 % and the 1% — is so much a part of the way that we live. The Capitol Couture Campaign and the campaigns that sort of play on all the excess of The Capitol are, in their own way, reminders not to let ourselves off the hook. These books are dystopic fiction but we're talking about us. I feel that the campaign [propels discussion about] Capitol values into the mainstream conversation. It's also very worthwhile for us all to be reminded that we're incriminated in that side of things too.

So, there's that. She doesn't really mention the giant elephant in the room (the bajillions of dollars to be made off of all of this that complicates things), but hey, we've got other sources for that.

Image: Scholastic