I've always tried to really focus on The Hunger Games movie, knowing that, yes, these are amazing books and I would feel like a failure, if I didn't get all three of them made.

The hiring of Phil Messina, the production designer, was a big decision. He's so gifted, and his ideas were always so smart and rooted in American history and architecture. Nothing feels like it's not us, or couldn't be us, and I think that's very important.

I've always tried to really focus on The Hunger Games movie, knowing that, yes, these are amazing books and I would feel like a failure, if I didn't get all three of them made.

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.

I was an executive before I was a producer, and I've seen franchise fever grow, over the course of my career. The one thing that people always forget is that it's only a franchise if audiences really want to see more of it. It's up to them. It's really not up to us.

If the movie [The Hunger Games] were stylized violence that was pretty and fun and cool, which is great when you go see 300 or The Matrix, it would just be out of sync with the fact that they're kids.

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.