After Philip Seymour Hoffman’s death in February, we heard he had one important scene left to film in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part Two. Despite our suggestion to use Jim Gaffigan as a stand-in, the rumor at the time was that Lionsgate would use “digital things” to complete the scene. (Because that worked so well with Nancy Marchand on The Sopranos…) Thankfully, director Francis Lawrence saw the flaw in that plan.
Lawrence told HuffPo (video here) that Hoffman had one week of filming left, including two important scenes with dialogue and some scenes without. One of the important scenes will be in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part One and the other is in Part Two. Lawrence says he decided against using CGI to finish these scenes, and they instead “rewrote his scenes and gave the dialogue to other actors”. His reason was simple.
“I just think to try to fake a Philip Seymour Hoffman performance would have been catastrophic and I would never want to do that.”
Wait, somebody in Hollywood opting for the respectful and sensible thing? Kudos.
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part One opens this Friday, with Part Two coming November 20th, 2015.