Gary Ross' adaptation of Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games has added another key cast member in the form of Elizabeth Banks.
She'll play Effie Trinket, and she'll be escorting Katniss and Peeta (already-cast Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson) to the central city, Capitol, where the titular life-or-death games take place.
Banks is always a charming presence on screen, and it looks like she'll get to show off her ditzy naivety here as a 'flighty bureaucrat'.
Lionsgate has high hopes for the project, which has franchise-potential (the novel is the first in the trilogy) and is often optimistically dubbed 'the new Twilight '.
Banks joins Lawrence, Hutcherson and Liam Hemsworth in the flick, and Entertainment Weekly are reporting that relative unknowns Dayo Okeinyi and Amadla Stenberg have bagged the roles of Thresh and Rue.
The Hunger Games was the first movie Lawrence signed up for post-Oscar nomination, which is enough of a reason to be quietly confident about it, but it's a shame that the Twilight comparisons continue to be dredged up.
