Philip Seymour Hoffman Left One Key Scene Of The Final ‘Hunger Games’ Installment Unfilmed

News and rumors continue to trickle out in the wake of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s unexpected death this weekend. Hard news, rampant speculation, fond retrospectives, film fallout, drug culture opining, and much more fill the headlines. The country is giving Hoffman the Bieberian levels of attention in death that it rarely gave him in life. 

Hoffman was an incredibly industrious actor, as his IMDB will attest to (and understate). The biggest of those is undeniably the cultural behemoth that is the Hunger Games series, even if that makes longtime fans and Paul Thomas Anderson acolytes cringe.

Hoffman died with seven days of filming left for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part Two. He joined the blockbuster franchise as new gamesmaker and key player Plutarch Heavensbee in the series’ most recent iteration, Catching Fire. As recounted by The Hollywood Reporter, Hoffman had “one major, emotional scene left to film” at the time of his death.

A Lionsgate executive had some reassuring words for fans of the series, though they come off as rather limp and robotic in regards to Hoffman. As quoted by THR’s Kim Masters:

“We’re all extraordinarily sad. But as it relates to production, it’s going to have no impact. Obviously, we’re going to have a couple of work-around issues but the movie will be creatively whole. His performances in both [remaining] movies will be up to the best of his craft. We feel it will be a good tribute to him.”

THR then spoke to veteran effects supervisor Rob Legato, who gave a rather straightforward evaluation of what the filmmakers could do, but also a rather fascinating wrinkle for future filmmaking.

On Hunger Games:

“These days the technology of using someone’s likeness is a whole lot easier to do,” he said. “I won’t say you could generate a Philip Seymour Hoffman with all the acting ability, but you could certainly replicate him for a shot or two.”

This idea, which is an idea that has come up before in similar, if less infamous, situations, is not a foreign one. What is most interesting is the final paragraph:

Legato predicts that in the future, insurance companies may require actors in big films to be scanned and have a range of facial expressions recorded in advance “in case something like this does happen — and it seems to have happened quite a bit lately.”

Hunger Games is hardly the only Hoffman work affected by his passing, though. The John Slattery directorial debut God’s Pocket generated buzz at Sundance and is apt to be in awards conversation next year, by the sound of it. The thriller A Most Wanted Man is also on its way. Sadly Happyish, the Showtime series set around the actor, might not even be a thing anymore.

Tyler Hanan
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