Clearly confident that The Hunger Games will tap its built-in, book-fed audience to deliver solid box office returns, Lionsgate is making sure the machine is up and running to keep on pumping out cinematic adaptations. A key part of that is getting a script ready for the second instalment, Catching Fire, and the studio is now trying to hire 127 Hours scriptwriter Simon Beaufoy to make that happen.
According to Deadline, the original plan was for **Hunger Games **co-writer/director Gary Ross to take on the task, but he’s understandably a little busy putting the finishing touches to the film in advance of its March 23 release date.
While Games author Suzanne Collins also collaborated on the first movie’s screenplay (which then got some polishing from Billy Ray), it would appear that Lionsgate is looking outside the original team to at least get the early drafts written. Though it’s likely that Collins will once more get plenty of input.
Mild spoiler alert here for anyone who has yet to read either of the first two books: Catching Fire finds Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) and Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson) punished for their defiance by being forced to compete in a special 75th staging of the games where they must compete against past winners.
As of right now, Beaufoy’s involvement is still closer to rumour status, since no official talks have taken place. And if you’ve yet to see the trailer for the first film, you can see it right here.