6) Andrew Niccol

Ever seen the criminally underrated ‘Gattaca’? Or ‘The Truman Show’? Director Andrew Niccol has excellent experience with setting a film in a sci-fi world whether it’s in a serious film or more of a comedic drama. And even though his latest effort ‘In Time’ wasn’t all that it could have been, one of its main strengths was how fleshed out its ‘near future’ world and felt surprisingly authentic. Unfortunately, his commitments with the upcoming sci-fi feature by the author of ‘Twilight’ titled ‘The Host’ might not make it possible for him to take on the world of ‘The Hunger Games’. Otherwise, you could definitely count on the sci-fi aspect of the films to be very strong.

7) Tom Tykwer

If Lionsgate does end up hiring Tom Tykwer for ‘Catching Fire’, they should consider the visuals very well covered. The German director started out with the extremely fast paced and kinetically directed ‘Run Lola Run’ which was essentially a non stop chase thriller with so many unique stylistic elements that it was great fun to watch. With ‘Perfume: Story of a Murderer’, he proved that he can tell a great slower paced story with the right visual style. Not to mention it was a book adaptation. ‘The International’ had a great sense of style once again and the Guggenheim sequence was one of the more memorable action sequences of the year. I don’t know about his ability to tackle emotion as well though, but it’s worth taking the risk to find out.

8 ) Kathryn Bigelow

Kathryn Bigelow is the Oscar-winning director of ‘The Hurt Locker’, which provided us with some of the most tense and nerve wracking action scenes in a grounded war film. And that’s exactly the kind of tone that ‘The Hunger Games’ could use in its action sequences to pull viewers in, especially since the action plays a larger part in ‘Catching Fire’. Besides, one theme of the franchise is woman empowerment and it would only be fitting to have a female director take on a big budget franchise like this – which would be a first in Hollywood. She’s someone who usually is attracted to a lot of political fare as seen by her upcoming film about Bin Laden, but there’s enough commentary in the material to keep her satisfied.

9) Steven Soderbergh

This might be the most unlikely and out of the left field choice of director for many, but hear me out. Not only does the Oscar winning director have more varied experience and a versatile list of excellent movies than people on this list combined, he also already has directed ‘The Hunger Games’ to an extent. Soderbergh was the second unit director on the film being a friend of Gary Ross, so I would assume he’s not only familiar with the franchise by now and has hands-on experience with the material, but you’ve also seen some of his direction in the movie itself. Aside from that, he has experience with major studio franchises (Oceans Trilogy), ensemble casts (Contagion, Traffic), risky indie fare (too many to mention) which could definitely help make the material more edgy, and very recently provided us with some excellent action sequences in ‘Haywire’. And hey, that movie also had a kick-ass female protagonist. You know what? Just end this discussion and hire the guy already. A match made in heaven.

So that’s it for the directors that we think can do a great job with ‘The Hunger Games’ franchise. But what do I know? Sound off in the comments below if you agree or disagree or have any choices of your own that would trump mine.