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It was really exciting
coming back to Penem.

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I think when we finished Mocking
Jays in 2015, all of us, I think,

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including Suzanne Collins
thought we were done with us.

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I know she had been working on
the books and movies for 10 years.

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Nina may be on the Movies for
Five Me Four, something like that.

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And we thought this was kind of the end.

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And Nina and I also knew we weren't going
to be coming back unless Suzanne wrote

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another book and she didn't have plans.

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But then 2019 she called and surprised
us and said that she was almost finished

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with a new book. We had no idea she was
even inspired and had started one. Yeah,

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I mean, look, we were all
fans of Olivia's and it's,

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it's always a tricky thing
because somebody can write a song,

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but you don't want it to just be a
random sort of piece of music. And she

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came in and she saw the movie
and she really liked the movie.

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And then she and I sat down with some
of her team in a conference room at

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Lionsgate and I basically talked at her
for 45 minutes about the themes of the

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movie and the kind of feeling
that I want at the end,

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and what I thought she could
possibly do narratively with lyrics.

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And I wasn't pitching lyrics,

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but I was just talking about the feeling
and what I would sort of hoping for.

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And three weeks later, she turned in
the song. It was sort of just perfect,

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like Pitch Perfect tonally. Narratively
what the lyrics, what she's sang,

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and what she's singing about and
how it ties into the story. I mean,

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she just did a phenomenal job. Some of
them. Many were sort of first choices,

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I'd say. Rachel was definitely
a first choice. Yeah,

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I'd seen her in West Side Story
and I knew she'd be perfect.

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She's a great actor and I mean an
amazing singer, and we needed both.

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So I thought she'd be great.
Viola was the first choice.

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I luckily had a little bit
of a relationship with her,

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and so we had a nice chat about just the
stories in general and the themes and

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her characters connection to theme and
the opportunity to do something kind

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of wildly different for her.
Peter Dinklage also First Choice,

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he's just amazing. I knew
him a little bit as well,

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and so to be able to work with
him was great. Jason Schwartzman,

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also a fan of his from
Rushmore. So first choice there.

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The two big sort of standouts,

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I'll say three sort of big standouts
that kind of came in more randomly for me

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were Tom. He came out of the blue.
He was like, I didn't know his work.

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His audition came in kind of late in the
game and it just blew everybody out of

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the water. So it was truly
his read, his audition,

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he just kind of smoked everybody.

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There's a scene near the end
of the movie where Tom is alone

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in the forest and he's going through the
real sort of emotional change and it's

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kind of the final descent,
I would say, into darkness.

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And I think his performance is phenomenal.

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And so that was a great time
for me filming. And also I,

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it's one of my favorite
moments in the movie.