It can really vary from movie to movie what the producer's role is and there are all kinds of producers. There are line producers who do a lot of the nuts and bolts work on the set.

I'm very superstitious. I come from a family that's big on not painting the nursery until the baby is home.

Being able to just stick to our instincts and honor the [Hunger Games] books and find a way to stay the course of trying to make the best possible decisions that you would make creatively on any movie, without having your head turned too much by all of the interest, has been a great challenge. It's the best challenge you could ask for, but that was a big challenge.

When fans get very passionate about a movie, they just want you to do it well. They don't want you to screw it up. Their idea of doing it well might be different than yours, but ultimately, they really just don't want you to mess up the thing that they love.

I felt that there were so many things that could go wrong, in adapting The Hunger Games , and I had this fierce desire to protect this book that she had written. At that time, I read the second book, in manuscript form, and so I saw where she was going with the series. I was able to convince Suzanne [Collins] to trust me with the books.

It was very important to me to choose a director like Gary [Ross], whose instincts come from character, who's a storyteller, and who puts characters first.

Suzanne [Collins] was very involved in the development of the script. She wrote the first draft. She was very involved with Billy Ray, when he wrote his draft.