The Hunger Games is still a month away from its cinematic release, but Jennifer Lawrence has already started getting excited about shooting the series’ first sequel, Catching Fire .
“Signing onto the movies I was like, ‘Well, I’ll probably love the first one and then I’ll just want to get the rest of them out of the way,’” Lawrence told Entertainment Weekly . “But I can’t wait to start training.”
“As soon as they were like ‘We need to start training in July,’ I was like ‘Woohoo!’” continues Lawrence. “I can’t wait to get back, though I don’t know if that’s because I think we might shoot in Hawaii!”
Meanwhile, director Gary Ross has also been sharing his interest in the work that lies ahead, giving a few potentially spoilery comments on his love for the source material.
“I love the title Catching Fire because from the moment Katniss was willing to eat the berries,” he says, “the moment she was willing to give her life for something larger than herself, she set off a chain reaction that was at once bigger than her and also because of her. That’s a very exciting movie to make because you’re seeing the emergence of a leader. It’s the birth of a revolution so it has context that’s larger than just the Games themselves.”
He also thinks that Lawrence’s performance in the first movie was good enough to trouble the Academy judges.
“The range in this performance, the emotional terrain that she investigates, the demands of what this role are,” he gushes. “It’s such an intensely physical role and an emotional one. She carries the entire movie. To be able to do that at that age is so kind of incredible that I was in a little bit of awe. Do I think she should be nominated? Absolutely.”
The Hunger Games opens in the UK on 23 March 2012.
