Here's why a movie has less info. than the book
Posted: 16 Apr 2022, 01:09
There is always a common complaint that a movie leaves out a lot of stuff from the book. One of the reasons for this is that the movie would be too long, and another is the additional production cost. I am just going to focus on the production costs and you might find my data illuminating. I am going to specifically focus on a movie that I know was very widely seen by most of the people that visit this website.
The Hunger Games - Personally, I thought they did a pretty good job of making the movie faithful to the book, but one thing that was never explained in the movie was how Katniss learned to hunt and to be so good with the bow. In the book we learn that her father began teaching her from the time she was very young, but this is never alluded to in the movie. Now, one would figure that they could devote some time to explaining this, but after doing some research I learned that each minute of screen time that we see in The Hunger Games cost the production company $550,000.
The cheapest way they could have fixed it: During the dream sequence after Katniss had been stung by the tracker jackers we learn how her father dies in the mining accident and how, as a result, her mother "zones out" in what might be interpreted as a nervous breakdown. But just consider, if at the very beginning of that dream sequence they had shown her as a little girl with her father in the woods teaching her how to use the bow the entire question would be answered .... but if they only used ten seconds of film to depict him perhaps kneeling beside her and showing her how to pull the bow string those ten seconds would have added $91,666 to the cost of the film. (10 sec = 1/6 of one minute, or 1/6 of $550,000). Imagine how long it would take you to earn $91,666 and then to see it disappear in ten seconds. That's a pretty staggering thought isn't it? Now just imagine the cost if they added every detail in the book.
And THAT is why movies don't contain everything we read in the book.
The Hunger Games - Personally, I thought they did a pretty good job of making the movie faithful to the book, but one thing that was never explained in the movie was how Katniss learned to hunt and to be so good with the bow. In the book we learn that her father began teaching her from the time she was very young, but this is never alluded to in the movie. Now, one would figure that they could devote some time to explaining this, but after doing some research I learned that each minute of screen time that we see in The Hunger Games cost the production company $550,000.
The cheapest way they could have fixed it: During the dream sequence after Katniss had been stung by the tracker jackers we learn how her father dies in the mining accident and how, as a result, her mother "zones out" in what might be interpreted as a nervous breakdown. But just consider, if at the very beginning of that dream sequence they had shown her as a little girl with her father in the woods teaching her how to use the bow the entire question would be answered .... but if they only used ten seconds of film to depict him perhaps kneeling beside her and showing her how to pull the bow string those ten seconds would have added $91,666 to the cost of the film. (10 sec = 1/6 of one minute, or 1/6 of $550,000). Imagine how long it would take you to earn $91,666 and then to see it disappear in ten seconds. That's a pretty staggering thought isn't it? Now just imagine the cost if they added every detail in the book.
And THAT is why movies don't contain everything we read in the book.