Lionsgate Wants More ‘Twilight’ and ‘Hunger Games’ Movies

Taking a cue from NBC’s tried-and-true “make it 1997 again through science or magic” business model, studio Lionsgate has decided that its best bet would be to return to the safe bosom of 2012. That was a simpler, kinder time for the production and distribution house; they were riding high, with one major franchise wrapping up and another colossal cash cow on the horizon. But in the years since The Hunger Games series reached its conclusion, Lionsgate hasn’t had a real hit. And in their search for the next big payday, they’ve gone the safest route by just giving the people more of what they want. Or rather wanted in 2012.

That’s right, Lionsgate wants to make more Twilight and Hunger Games movies. A deeply unsettling item running at Variety today states that Lionsgate CEO John Feltheimer mentioned during a phone call with financial analysts that he’d be willing to revive the insanely lucrative film cycles. “There are a lot more stories to be told, and we’re ready to tell them when our creators are ready to tell those stories,” Feltheimer said. With the likelihood of Jennifer Lawrence or Kristen Stewart returning to reprise their starmaking roles landing somewhere around .000001%, these would be ostensible reboots — a concept that, as we learned with Sony’s efforts to eke some more money out of Spider-Man via Andrew Garfield, cannot possibly go wrong.

But Feltheimer made it clear that he’d only move forward on his grand Just Keep Doing What Worked Five Years Ago initiative if he could get approval from source material authors Suzanne Collins and Stephenie Meyer. Which would be a pretty effective safeguard against the inevitable charges of creative bankruptcy, come to think of it. “Yeah, we’re drawing on a well that dried up years ago, but the authors let us!”