Nina Jacobson Quotations

It's definitely a tough blow to your morale to get fired.

Suzanne Collins, it was such a big thing for me to make the handshake with her and to say, 'You can trust me. I will not screw up your books. And I won't let them be diluted and softened. And I won't let them be exploited and made guilty of the sins that are being commented on in the books.' I take that really seriously.

When you're younger and you see something that really speaks to you, it's indelible in a way that's not the same as when you're an adult. So I'll always love reading books and making movies that resonate with young people.

I know many filmmakers, and shooting in IMAX is challenging. Filmmakers love the vividness and power of those big images.

My daughter and I have this thing we call a PMA: 'perfect moment alert.' I try to really notice when we're having a PMA.

There are still so few female directors. There are far fewer writers than we'd like to see.

I think that one of the greatest perspectives that I have, from being a buyer for my whole career until I became a producer, is that I have a pretty good understanding of the buyers mentality.

I've been fortunate enough to match up the material I'm producing with the right buyer, the company that will make it and that wants it, and that isn't saying yes to be nice, but is saying yes because they want and need that movie and it's going to be important on their slate.

Getting movies developed doesn't do me any good as a producer. It only does me good to get movies made.

I think that women are underrepresented behind the camera as directors.

I'm very superstitious. I come from a family that's big on not painting the nursery until the baby is home.

I am happy to keep working on books because I'm always reading, and I'm always trying to fall in love.

There's as much great authorship in the filmmaker community as in the literary community, and I'd love to welcome more filmmakers into the fold.

Ultimately, I am very filmmaker oriented, as a producer.

When I love a book, I really love a book. You don't get that very often.

When doing family entertainment, you don't actually worry about kids. You know what you can't do. But in terms of sensibility and sophistication and wit and ambition, aim for your own taste level, and kids will - if they're interested in the subject matter - be glad that you did.

The IMAX cameras are big and heavy. And they're loud. So you have to be mindful of whether or not they're worth it; I'd say the image quality is incredible and the scale is amazing.

When you read a book, you create that tonal bandwidth. You set a tone for yourself, as you're reading it, in which everything exists within the world of your imagination.

Ultimately, only audiences decide what's a franchise.

Suzanna Collins was very supportive, but we very much wanted her blessing on casting. In production, she visited us once, but she really was not involved in the production process. She's seen the Hunger Games movie twice, in the post-production process, once as an early cut and then once when it was finished.

I can't imagine Hunger Games, even with its very popular books, being nearly a success that it's been without Jen Lawrence being the perfect person to play that role - a very modern celebrity, a very down-to-earth, accessible, celebrity.

[On the racial backlash about Hunger Games casting]: "People should have ignored the five racist idiots.

Deb Zane, our casting director on the Hunger Games was very sanguine, from the beginning, about just blocking out what everybody else says that they want.

[On The Hunger Games success]: "It hit on the zeitgeist of the disparity b/w the haves and have nots.

The most powerful decision-making part of the audience is women. Boys have a lot of impact on the industry, but it's often women who impact what stories get made.

It's an exciting time, when you can make your movie on a cellphone. If it's good, it WILL get noticed.

When fans get very passionate about a movie, they just want you to do it well. They don't want you to screw it up. Their idea of doing it well might be different than yours, but ultimately, they really just don't want you to mess up the thing that they love.

As a producer, you can't break up w/your own project. It's like sleeping with someone that you don't like... Forever.

Being able to just stick to our instincts and honor the [Hunger Games] books and find a way to stay the course of trying to make the best possible decisions that you would make creatively on any movie, without having your head turned too much by all of the interest, has been a great challenge. It's the best challenge you could ask for, but that was a big challenge.

We knew that we wanted TheHunger Games to be PG-13 because she wrote the book for readers 12 and up, and we wanted them to be able to see the movie. It's a movie that is meant to be relevant to young people, and not exclude them, in any way.

We didn't want to dilute or soften the material because that would really be irresponsible, in its own way. The [Hunger Games] books are very intense and very demanding of the reader, and the movie should be that too.

We both [with Suzanne Collins ] felt strongly that you wouldn't want to age up the characters, no matter the age of the actors playing the roles. They should be playing the age that they are in the [Hunger Games] books. It would let people off the hook, if you said, "Well, instead of 12 to 18, why don't you make them 18 to 25 or 16 to 21?" If you don't stay true to the horror of the fact that they are 12 to 18, you're not doing justice to the book.

If the movie [The Hunger Games] were stylized violence that was pretty and fun and cool, which is great when you go see 300 or The Matrix, it would just be out of sync with the fact that they're kids.

I've always tried to really focus on The Hunger Games movie, knowing that, yes, these are amazing books and I would feel like a failure, if I didn't get all three of them made.

I love the Hunger Games books. Certainly, the fans are there. They're grown enormously since the beginning. When I first brought the books to Lionsgate, they had sold about 150,000 copies, which is a very good result for a YA book. And to their credit, Lionsgate was very excited and committed to the movie, from the beginning.

Only audiences decide what's a franchise. Only audiences decide what's a hit. I have always been mindful of not wanting to be the Miami Heat of movies.

I was an executive before I was a producer, and I've seen franchise fever grow, over the course of my career. The one thing that people always forget is that it's only a franchise if audiences really want to see more of it. It's up to them. It's really not up to us.

I was focused on The Hunger Games movie with my director, with the studio, and with the cast and crew. We all just focused on making the best possible movie we could, and earning the right to do more.

Suzanne [Collins] was very involved in the development of the script. She wrote the first draft. She was very involved with Billy Ray, when he wrote his draft.

I never had to put myself in somebody else's shoes.

I'm an ardent fan. All I really had to do was put myself in my own shoes.

Little decisions were made, every day. In this movie [The Hunger Games], we really focused on Cinna and we didn't get time to focus on the other stylist.

There is a young fella who works for me, named Brian Unkeless, who's very smart. We're a very small company that has been Brian and me and two assistants, although we're growing a little bit now. He read the [The Hunger Games] book and loved it, and told me I should read it. He had been a fan of the Gregor books. So, I read it and couldn't put it down and couldn't stop thinking about it. I really became obsessed with the thought of producing it, and was completely bothered by the idea that anybody but me could produce it.

I felt that there were so many things that could go wrong, in adapting The Hunger Games , and I had this fierce desire to protect this book that she had written. At that time, I read the second book, in manuscript form, and so I saw where she was going with the series. I was able to convince Suzanne [Collins] to trust me with the books.

I am very filmmaker oriented, as a producer. I think the most important thing is that you have to really choose the players carefully.

It was very important to me to choose a director like Gary [Ross], whose instincts come from character, who's a storyteller, and who puts characters first.

I felt that with each movie, Gary [Ross] adopts a different style. He doesn't have one look that's the Gary Ross look, and I thought that was important.

The hiring of Phil Messina, the production designer, was a big decision. He's so gifted, and his ideas were always so smart and rooted in American history and architecture. Nothing feels like it's not us, or couldn't be us, and I think that's very important.

In the evolution of the [The Hunger Games] movie, Gary [Ross] and I talked a lot about tonal bandwidth and making sure that the look and feel and style and choices of the movie stayed within a certain consistent bandwidth.

When you read a book [The Hunger Games], you create that tonal bandwidth. You set a tone for yourself, as you're reading it, in which everything exists within the world of your imagination. In the book, it's great when she can push a button and food comes up, as per your order.

You're not doing the scene exactly the way it is in the book [The Hunger Games], but the intention of the scene is there.

You are there to support the vision of the people who you choose to excute the movie.

Women are making strides in many areas and women have mentored and supported me along the way. I think that women are underrepresented behind the camera as directors.

The most important part of filmmaking is the collaboration and the ensemble element of it. If you just all focus on the task and the work and try and make the best film that you can then people will come.

Nobody roots for people who presume success. You have to earn success, and success is earned by making a movie that audiences like and want to see more of.

The "If you build it, they will come" approach to filmmaking has always been helpful to me.

It can really vary from movie to movie what the producer's role is and there are all kinds of producers. There are line producers who do a lot of the nuts and bolts work on the set.