Gary Ross bows out of 'Catching Fire'

Now that it looks like Gary Ross will not be back to helm Catching Fire, the continuation of The Hunger Games, Lionsgate will now try to find someone to take the directorial seat when book 2 in the film series begins lensing this fall. Part of the reason Ross has moved on is historically, he’s a very individualistic director, moving from one genre to another with relative ease, because he does not like getting painted into a corner as a director of one genre. It would seem that he has no desire to spend another year –or more if he was staying on to helm the entire series- stuck doing the same thing. And another maybe Lionsgate’s typically low-end salary offer. While Ross was paid $3 million to direct and 5% of the back-end, for someone like him -who’s had a very lucrative career as a screenwriter (and rewriter) and director before The Hunger Games- some within the industry considered their pay to him to be pretty low-ball. Rumors suggested that he would be requesting a bigger cut of the profit, considering the huge success of the film. But, like I said, Lionsgate is notoriously stingy on paying creative people (not one of the other directors of the Twilight Saga was able to rise above the lackluster source material of the novels) so my guess he would have had little to stand on. Like the Twilight novels, the success of the books sort guarantees that no matter who directs Catching Fire, it will succeed financially. Yes, creativity is dead. Long live films in the empty minds of its viewers. Meanwhile, in a surprise move, 20^th Century Fox will delay production on the X- Men: First Class sequel until January, which would free up star Jennifer Lawrence to make Catching Fire. Contractually, had Fox decided to film their sequel this fall, Lawrence had to do that first before Catching Fire. By playing nice, I suspect it means Lionsgate will need to do something nice down the line for Fox. It also means the X Men sequel is delayed a year. 

Plan accordingly.