Hunger Games' Francis Lawrence Planning New Movie Of Homer's Odyssey

Francis Lawrence has been busy prepping, filming, editing or promoting some Hunger Games movie or another for years now. Today, he's deep in post production on his third and final picture in the sequence, Mockingjay: Part Two, and that will be with us in November. Then, after a Christmas in which I imagine he'll do very little but sleep, Lawrence will be up and at 'em again. Deadline say he's re-teaming with Mockingjay co-writer Peter Craig, producer Nina Jacobson and studio Lionsgate for a film version of The Odyssey. In many ways, an epic undertaking. The Odyssey is the second classical poem credited to Homer, after The Illiad. It tells the story of Odysseus after Troy and on his voyages home. If you've seen The Coen Bros.' O Brother Where Art Thou, it's like that but with less Dapper Dan and more sandals. The Odyssey has... well, it has more or less everything. And that's going to be part of the challenge of making this picture. Bending a typical modern movie shape out of such material will be tricky, though I'm sure that's exactly what Lionsgate will be expecting. Casting on this film should be fun to watch, at least. Expect to hear a lot more about that after the summer, when Lawrence has a little more time on his hands and starts squeezing actors meetings in between colour grading and scoring sessions.