According to an LA Times report citing an insider in the know, Lionsgate is looking at a few notable names to take the helm of the Hunger Games franchise for the series sequel Catching Fire. Among the "seven or eight names" -- all men, it's noted -- are David Cronenberg, Alfonso Cuaron, and Alejandro González Iñárritu.
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Promoting his indie genre-bender Detention today in Los Angeles (in theaters Friday), Hunger Games star Josh Hutcherson found himself in the line of questioning about the much-discussed ambiguity surrounding director Gary Ross's potential return to the franchise. “I think Gary’s the man," he diplomatically told The Hollywood Reporter. "Gary is in my mind is the only one that could ever direct the second one. That’s what I’m sticking to.” (UPDATE: Looks like Hutcherson'll have to readjust his thinking - Ross is officially out of the running for Catching Fire.)
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Mattel has unveiled the first look at their Hunger Games-themed Katniss Everdeen Barbie doll ($29.95), available for pre-order today and on shelves in August, and the result is... kinda close to what I envisioned when I read Suzanne Collins' novels. Not that District 12's underfed hunter gal ever hewed that close to Barbie's usual unattainably bosomy dimensions in most readers' minds, but something in Katniss-Barbie's face is appropriately feline, with just the merest hint of the full-lipped pout that Jennifer Lawrence brought to the screen.
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It's easy to pile on Hollywood for its craven cash grabs, sequelitis and other low-hanging fruit harvested and passed off in the name of popular entertainment. It's also fair, after a glance at the top 20 or so openings of all time, to acknowledge that mass audiences have tended to let studios get away with such output over the last decade in particular. But if we're to take anything from the huge opening-weekend success of The Hunger Games, it might be to look at its place on that list — squarely in third place, below even better-regarded cinematic efforts Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 and The Dark Knight. With this development, could crowds and critics alike have proven what the sheer volume of lesser hits would seem to contradict — that quality matters?
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Suzanne Collins can start her victory lap now. The film version of her first Hunger Games novel is on the brink of blowing up box-office records – and critics and fans like it, too. Other young-adult fantasy authors haven’t been quite so successful in dealing with Hollywood. Some of Collins’s success was luck and good timing: her first Hunger Games book was released a month after Stephenie Meyer’s final Twilight novel appeared, sending publishers and studios alike scrambling for the next young-adult franchise. But Collins also skillfully played the game with and for the filmmakers, making deliberate choices about how she wrote the novels and how she helped market them to the books’ fierce fans. Forget teenage love triangles or wizards vs. werewolves; here's a far more practical list of dos and don'ts for when your popular young-adult fantasy book is being adapted by Hollywood. (Spoilers for lesser movies ahead.)
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Movie events have become deadly little things, highly mechanized gadgets thrown by studio marketing departments into an audience’s midst in advance; then we just stand around and wait for them to explode. The Hunger Games, adapted from the first of Suzanne Collins’ hugely successful trio of young adult novels, was decreed an event long before it became anything close to a movie: More than a year ago its studio, Lionsgate, launched a not-so-stealthy advertising campaign that made extensive use of social media to coax potential fans into convincing one another that they had to see this movie. The marketing was so nervily persuasive that you had to wonder: How could any movie – especially one that, as it turns out, is largely and surprisingly naturalistic, as opposed to the usual toppling tower of special effects – possibly hope to measure up?
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With Lionsgate's big screen adaptation of Suzanne Collins’ teen-centric sci-fi survival-adventure The Hunger Games hitting screens this week, it’s kind of impossible not to draw comparisons to that other YA juggernaut series, which concludes its billion-dollar run on pop culture this fall. So how does The Hunger Games measure up to Twilight?
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Gary Ross may have been an unexpected choice to direct The Hunger Games, but his quest for the gig was no less obsessive than the fervor of the novels’ fans; it took him exec-stalking across the Atlantic, involved elaborate custom-made storyboards, and inspired him to make a video of actual Hunger Games fans and their love for Suzanne Collins’s sci-fi series. (Besides, who else could’ve brought on Steven Soderbergh to direct second unit on one of the film’s big scenes?)
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Young heroes rebel against a fascist government that controls its citizenry through institutionalized terror and reality television, igniting a revolution that spreads across an isolated land via broadcast images and word of mouth. The Arab Spring? Nope. Try The Hunger Games, set in a dystopian sci-fi future that parallels current global unrest, which stars Jennifer Lawrence, Elizabeth Banks, and Donald Sutherland say they hope could spur a generation of YA-consuming youths into political action.
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With The Hunger Games just two Fridays away from blowing up the box office, it's about time you get acquainted with the YA phenomenon launched by Suzanne Collins bestselling novels. So for the next ten days, Movieline will be counting down to The Hunger Games with a new feature every day to prep you for the dystopian sci-fi saga. Let's start things off with a look at a newly unveiled clip featuring Josh Hutcherson (Bridge to Terabithia, The Kids Are All Right) as golden boy Peeta, who declares his love for Jennifer Lawrence's Katniss on national television. Cue the collective swoon in 3, 2, 1...
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After receiving over 600 entries in our Hunger Games haiku contest, it took some Katniss-strength fortitude to find one victor to take home the coveted grand prize, a pair of tickets to the March 12 Los Angeles premiere. You think choosing between Peeta and Gale is hard? Try selecting a winner from the vivid, emotional, romantic, lyrical, hilarious, and evocative poems submitted by Hunger Games diehards in our Cornucopia of words.
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Lana Del Rey's 15 minutes may be nearing their end (she did just postpone her tour after tanking on SNL), but she's got one last charge towards relevance up her sleeve; just check out her new jam inspired by The Hunger Games called, simply, "Hunger Games." So Lana. So Katniss. "This District smells like rat piss/My name is Katniss/I play the Hunger Gaaaaames..."
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Make like Katniss and sharpen those hunting skills, Hunger Games fans, because Lionsgate's launching a scavenger hunt with a worthy payoff to count down the mere 100 days that remain until Suzanne Collins' dystopian teen battle royale tale hits screens on March 23: Collect all 100 pieces in the Hunger Games 100 Poster Puzzle Hunt and be the first to get a peek at the full official first poster for the March flick. You can start with golden-flecked puzzle piece #78 (of 100), which Movieline hosts exclusively after the jump. (Hint: It's a corner piece! Get to puzzling already!)
The jury's still out as far as I'm concerned on whether or not director Gary Ross (Seabiscuit) was the right director to helm Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games, even with the mostly-satisfying first trailer debut earlier this week. Lionsgate, however, seems more confident in Ross, as they want him to return to helm the second Hunger Games installment, 2013's Catching Fire, with writer Simon Beaufoy (Slumdog Millionaire, 127 Hours) reportedly in the running to script.
If you haven't read Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games books yet, the blazing new motion poster Lionsgate debuted today for the 2012 Hunger Games film won't make much sense. Suffice to say, once you begin reading the novels, the sight of a flaming gold bird-shaped pin will stir your senses into action, the symbol of rebellion and of the series' young heroine, Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence).
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