With the next installment of The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, about a month away from shooting, there’s several other developments happening around the franchise.
One is the fact that renowned actor Philip Seymor Hoffman is officially onboard to play Plutarch Heavensbee, as well as the report that the franchise has inspired more interest in archery with the Olympics.
First off, Hoffman, who won the Academy Award for playing Truman Capote is also in the upcoming Paul Thomas Anderson film The Master, where he plays a character based on L. Ron Hubbard who starts his own religion. Although the Hunger Games will be a huge money-maker no matter who plays the role, Hoffman is a big coup because he is indeed a tremendously talented actor, and his performance is sure to be awesome.
Hoffman told Entertainment Weekly he came aboard because “I liked the people involved. It’s a great group of actors. It’s a great environment. And the character was something I was attracted to. It was just an interesting role.”
Now in this interview, Hoffman gave away a spoiler for the story, which we won’t give away here, but he of course has read the book and script in preparing for the role, and “I kinda ruined it for myself,” he said with a laugh. “But I’m reading it anyway, because I really want to find out everything.”
And as we previously mentioned, The Hunger Games has also reportedly increased interest in archery with the current Olympic games, archery coverage has been reaching “record-breaking viewing numbers in the US this year,” as Digitalspy.com reports. The site also tells us archery got higher ratings than any other sport on MSNBC and NBC.
Alan Wurtzel, who is Research President of NBC, told the site, “The numbers for archery have been nothing less than huge.”
The Hollywood Reporter also notes that Jennifer Lawrence trained with an Olympic archer named Khatuna Lorig, and the Reporter made the joke that her name “sounds like it was ripped straight out of the film.”
And indeed, the Reporter tells us interest in archery is up big time all over the world right now because of The Hunger Games.
