14 DAY TRIAL // As an ultimate sign of respect for the late actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, director Francis Lawrence decided that he would not complete the role he played in “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay. Part 1” using computer-generated imagery, as it has been done with several other actors who died during production.
The director sat down with the Huffington Post and revealed in an interview that he considered that, by doing this, he paid homage to the late actor. As you may remember, Seymour died earlier this year, on February 2, of a drug overdose. At the time of death, he was working on the popular movie franchise alongside actress Jennifer Lawrence, where he played the part of Plutarch Heavensbee.
Hoffman's remaining scenes were written out of the script
The actor had completed most of his role, but there were still two scenes in which he had dialogue and several others where he simply had to be in the background. But rather than employ animators to bring Seymour back to life using computer graphics, the director made the decision to rewrite the script.
“He had two scenes with dialogue that were left and we decided we didn't want to try any digital trickery with him, so we rewrote his scenes and gave the dialogue to other actors,” the director said, adding, “I just think to try to fake a Philip Seymour Hoffman performance would have been catastrophic and I would never want to do that,” explaining his decision.
The director made the decision because he felt a computer-generated actor could not rise to the same level as the real Hoffman
It turns out that not even a hologram or a computer-generated animation model could have performed as well as Hoffman did, so the decision was made to rather have less scenes with the real Hoffman than have the fake one ruin the rest of the movie.
The director had only good things to say about Hoffman's acting, saying that “He was constantly sort of grinding away at a scene and was able to dig down and down and down, deeper and really find the dynamics of the relationships that he's in. And then once you've done that process then you don't really need many takes at all with him.”
The interview is a preamble to the movie's anticipated release, which is supposed to take place on November 21, this being the continuation of the popular young adult novel “The Hunger Games” movie adaptation, starring Jennifer Lawrence.
Another popular movie which is going to open next year and that also had one of its actors die during production was “Furious 7,” the latest installment of the “Fast & Furious” franchise. Main actor Paul Walker died in a car crash and the producers decided to replace him using his two brothers as body and voice doubles, and computer animation to recreate his face.
