While Hollywood, along with most of America, is enjoying a long weekend for the end-of-summer Labor Day holiday, the team at Lionsgate will be ruminating over the right director to bring the film of Suzanne Collins’ novel series **The Hunger Games **to the screen. And the current hot favourites? Gary Ross, Sam Mendes and David Slade.
According to Deadline, the three are top of the list for the job, which the Lionsgate bods will apparently dish out later this week.
Collins’ trilogy – the third book in the series, Mockingjay, hit shelves on August 24 – has been compared to H****arry Potter and Twilight in terms of its popularity amongst both the tween target audience and adults, with publishers Scholastic rushing to print more copies to keep up with demand.
And the premise? Sounding a lot like 2000’s Battle Royale, it all takes place in a ruined future America, where teens are forced to battle each other in gladiatorial combat as part of a reality show run by a cruel totalitarian government. Our heroine is Katniss Everdeen, a 16-year-old who takes part in the events. Lionsgate picked up the rights last year and gave Collins the first crack at the script, with Billy Ray then hired to polish it up.
As to which director might end up making the film, it’s anyone’s guess right now. Ross is still looking for his next job, Slade is also up for the chance to make Wolverine 2, and Mendes recently committed to making Ian McEwan adaptation On Chesil Beach, so any Hunger Games film would have to wait until that’s finished, not to mention his theatre commitments.
If you had to choose between the three, who would you pick? Or is there someone else you’d rather see getting the job?