Francis Lawrence talks 'Catching Fire' with MTV

MTV caught up with "Catching Fire" director Francis Lawrence, and got the scoop on taking over Gary Ross as director, as well as working with the new and old cast members.

Bing: More about 'Catching Fire' | More about Francis Lawrence

On taking over the director's chair:

"I liked what Gary did a lot, but I have a different style than he does," Lawrence explained. "So it was very easy for me to come in the room and sit down with the people involved in the movie and sort of say, 'Here's what I like about what Gary did that I would latch on to and hold onto and embrace, and here's the way I would do it differently.' The trickier thing, honestly for me, was sort of stepping into a world, and there's crew members that were on the first movie, obviously an entire cast, all the people that are returning that I inherited."

On the casting of Sam Claflin as Finnick Odair:

"[Claflin] is very athletic, which is great. He's in great shape. He's very charismatic," Lawrence said. "But I was also looking in the long term. There's kind of a rouge-like quality to him in this book. And long term, he's actually an emotional character and a very loyal character and a character who's in love; a character who experienced quite a lot of sadness. And he was really able to tap into that, as well as being really charming and sexy and handsome as hell."

On refining Haymitch Abernathy, played by Woody Harrelson:

"One of the things I really like about this book is you start to see kind of why Haymitch is the way he is, why people are the way they are, so he and I did a fair amount of work in terms of that, in terms of understanding PTSD and how to work with somebody with post-traumatic stress. Also we started messing around a lot with some real humanity in Haymitch because he can be quite cynical and sarcastic at times. But I think there's a more human side to him in this one as well."

Read the whole article on MTV.

Check out MSN Movies on Facebook or Twitter.
For more "Hunger Games" news, like the Hunger Games Blog on Facebook.