Jennifer Lawrence removed from Israeli Hunger Games posters

The star of Mockingjay – Part 2 has been deleted from marketing materials in Jerusalem and some other cities to avoid offending religious audiences

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 has opened in cinemas around the world, but there is one territory that will be seeing a bit less of star Jennifer Lawrence.

Posters for the final part of the dystopian action franchise in some parts of Israel have been redesigned so as to remove the Oscar-winning actor. Instead, Katniss Everdeen and her bow and arrow have been replaced with a mockingjay in a handful of cities across the country, including Bnei Brak and Jerusalem. “We discovered that public posters with the image of a female are often torn down in Jerusalem, while Bnei Brak does not allow posters with female images,” a representative of the film’s Israeli PR firm said to Ynet.

The city of Bnei Brak’s ruling on images of women is based on a fear that they “might incite the feelings of the city’s residents”, according to the Israeli website Haaretz. A marketing executive for the company hanging the posters in Israel said they have had “endless vandalisation” in the past, so chose not to take the risk.

The final Hunger Games chapter is expected to make $300m in its opening global weekend, according to analysts. But the film’s box-office performance in France has been weaker than Mockingjay – Part 1’s was, perhaps because the recent Paris attacks have affected public appetite for cinema-going.

Mockingjay – Part 2 is receiving more positive reviews than the previous film, with a 72% rating on the website Rotten Tomatoes, compared to 65% for Part 1, but still trailing behind the 89% achieved by the second film in the franchise, Catching Fire. Reviewing Mockingjay – Part 2 in the Guardian, Peter Bradshaw said: “Despite being over-extended, it’s interesting how much energy and ingenuity this story turned out to have.”

Lawrence will next be seen in Miracle Mop biopic Joy from American Hustle director David O Russell.

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