With Jennifer Lawrence signed, sealed and delivered to play Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games movie, director Gary Ross and his team now must turn their attention to filling out the film’s remaining roles.
In speaking with Entertainment Weekly about casting Jennifer, Ross touched upon where he’s at in the casting process for the remaining roles and confirmed that he’s “very close” to filling in many of them. He has “very, very good ideas” about who should play many of them and expects announcements to start rolling out “pretty quickly.”|
Though many actors and actresses have already auditioned for roles besides Katniss, Ross hasn’t screen-tested Jennifer Lawrence against any of them yet. You can bet the roles for Peeta, Gale and the other characters who spend a lot of time with Katniss will have to read with Jennifer before being signed off on.
As for Jennifer, now that she’s officially on board The Hunger Games movie project, she can focus on preparing for the role. The Kentucky native is set to begin archery lessons next week and will be learning to climb trees shortly after that. Anyone who didn’t see Winter’s Bone and thinks Jennifer may be too soft for the role might want to rethink their stance.
Ross also touched upon the controversy surrounding Jennifer’s age which at 20 is 4 years younger than Katniss in the books. He said author Suzanne Collins has no issue with the age gap and was actually more afraid of casting someone too young (Hailee Steinfeld, perhaps?). Collins wanted to ensure Katniss was a young woman capable of being maternal to her family.
Lastly, Ross put the hair color controversy to bed by saying Jennifer’s will be dark in the film. Not that there was ever any doubt that makeup artists couldn’t change her hair color.
Source: EW
