California, U.S.A. – Lionsgate a leading diversified global entertainment company, announced that The Hunger Games, which has already grossed nearly $620 million at the worldwide box office, has been approved for release in China in the first half of June.

The film will be released nationwide in China with both dubbed and subtitled prints by The China Film Group in conjunction with Lionsgate’s promotional partner, Talent International.  The Hunger Games will be one of the first Hollywood studio films to be released in China under the new blockbuster revenue sharing agreement announced in February that allows Western distributors to collect up to 25% of a film’s receipts in China.

“The Hunger Games juggernaut continues to gain momentum around the world, and we’re thrilled that we can now share the exciting first installment of THE HUNGER GAMES franchise with Chinese moviegoers in June,” said Lionsgate Motion Picture Group Co-Chairs Patrick Wachsberger and Rob Friedman.  “China is already one of the leading territories at the international box office, and the launch of The Hunger Games in this key market is another sign of the franchise’s continuing emergence as a truly global phenomenon.”

The Hunger Games has already grossed more than $380 million at the North American box office where it ranks 13th among the highest-grossing films of all time.  It has grossed nearly $620 million worldwide with upcoming launches in China and Japan.

“We view China as an increasingly important market for our content in Asia,” said Wendy Reeds, Executive Vice President of Content Sales & Distribution for Celestial Tiger Entertainment (CTE), Lionsgate’s venture with Saban Capital Group and Astro’s Celestial Pictures in Asia.  “The Chinese box office grew by more than 30% last year to over $2 billion, and The Hunger Games’ approval for nationwide release in China is a major step in translating the enormous commercial potential of this huge market into reality.”

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Though he’s been involved in sports since he was a little kid, Josh Hutcherson had to put on 15 pounds of muscle for the role of Peeta in the thrilling box office succes ‘The Hunger Games’. “I had to eat a lot of food and work out hard five days a week, with a lot of heavy weightlifting,” he explains. “The training was rigorous but it worked. And I loved doing all the running, jumping and evading people.

Stunt trainer Logan Hood adds: “We had Josh eating a ton and doing a crash program of heavy push and pull exercises. We had such a short lead time, but he jumped right into it.”

The muscle building was one thing, but finding the competitive edge necessary for the Games was something else again. “We had to learn to go from hanging out with your fellow actors to finding all kinds of fear and aggression against them. It was a very drastic transition every day, but we had amazing actors who brought that out physically,” says Hutcherson.

Alexander Ludwig especially had his work cut out for him as the ferocious Cato. “The fight training was extremely intense,” Ludwig admits. “I trained and trained and trained because I really wanted to be skilled the way Cato is. It was a great experience because I got to learn a lot of cool stuff, diving over things, doing flips, and more. I wanted to incorporate it all in the film, because I didn’t want to let any of what we learned go to waste.”

Dayo Okeniyi also had to do a lot of training to play Thresh. “I had to gain about 20 pounds so I went on a rigorous protein diet, did bodybuilding exercises, trained with swords, trained with boxing, and trained hand-to-hand combat for two months. But I love that stuff, so it was awesome.”

The entire cast was awed to see the results of their work ethic. “We were doing a lot of fun things like somersault rolls, balance boards, jumping on high blocks and obstacle courses,” recalls Jacqueline Emerson who plays Foxface. “But suddenly, you realize you’ve built all kinds of strength and stamina.”

Like the Tributes, the cast also had to endure the mercurial threats of shooting in the deep woods, which ranged from extreme weather to wild bears – not a complete surprise, given they were shooting in an area of North Carolina known for having the highest black bear density in the United States. “At times, if felt like we were all participating in the Games,” remarks Jon Kilik. “We were literally confronting snakes, bears and lightning and that is something you feel on the screen.”

“It was brutal at times,” Jack Quaid admits. “We had torrential downpours, flooding, scorching heat and then a bear would wander onto the set. But it was an amazing bonding experience. For most of us, this is either our first or second movie, and here we were flung into this crazy world. We definitely all had a great story to tell about what we did on our summer vacation.”

In the end, Ross wanted that heady mix of Katniss’ exhilaration, adrenaline, mortal fear and moral dilemmas to transfer directly to the audience as the characters battle to survive.  He knew there could be no holding back from the character’s raw emotions and tough decisions. “The beauty of what Suzanne did in the book was to always be honorable and never exploitative,” sums up Nina Jacobson. “She achieved that so deftly and Gary set out to keep that part of The Hunger Games’ legacy.”

For Suzanne Collins, that legacy is most of all about provoking young minds to think about the direction of the world’s future. As she told The New York Times about her hopes for The Hunger Games’ impact:

It’s crucial that young readers are considering scenarios about humanity’s future, because the challenges are about to land in their laps. I hope they question how elements of the books might be relevant in their own lives.

About global warming, about our mistreatment of the environment, but also questions like: How do you feel about the fact that some people take their next meal for granted when so many other people are starving in the world? What do you think about choices your government, past and present, or other governments around the world make? What’s your relationship to reality TV versus your relationship to the news?

Was there anything in the book that disturbed you because it reflected aspects of your own life, and if there was, what can you do about it? Because you know what? Even if they’re not of your making, these issues and how to deal with them will become your responsibility.

Image Courtesy of   Helga Esteb / Shutterstock.com

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Fans of Suzanne Collins’ ‘The Hunger Games’ are flocking to cinemas these days to root for Jennifer Lawrence’s heroine Katniss Everdeen. When her sister is chosen as Tribute, she volunteers to compete in the life-or-death show.

Once the Hunger Games get underway, Katniss must take the measure of her fellow Tributes, any one of whom could cause her demise. The casting of the two dozen Tributes was a major undertaking. “In the book, each Tribute has his or her own very specific social ranking and physical description, so we were very selective and cast them one at a time,” explains producer Jon Kilik.

“Our casting director, Debbie Zane, is just amazing at finding the most talented people from ages 12 to 18. She cast a wide net and was incredibly diligent. She and Gary worked patiently and very hard until we put the whole group together.”

The most fearsomely dangerous of the competitors are the so-called “Career Tributes,” who have been groomed and physically trained for the Games since the day they were born. Especially worrisome to Katniss are the four most favored Careers: Clove played by Isabelle Fuhrman, Cato played by Alexander Ludwig, Glimmer played by Leven Rambin and Marvel played by Jack Quaid. Each brings his or her own special skill.

“Clove has a lot more brains than a lot of the Tributes,” says Fuhrman, who recently came to the fore in the horror movie ‘Orphan’. “The interesting thing is that she looks very girly and frilly, but she also a very dark side to her.”

Adds Ludwig, best known for his role in ‘Race to Witch Mountain’: “Cato is someone who is very strong, physically and mentally, and is ruthless, but I think deep, deep down there was a good person inside him before he went into these Games.”

For Rambin, seen in roles on “One Tree Hill,” “Grey’s Anatomy” and “CSI: Miami,” the key to Glimmer was going at everything 110%. “Glimmer considers the Games an honor,” she notes. “She enjoys the fame, and because of that she can be a great threat.”

Quaid, who makes his feature film debut in ‘The Hunger Games’, says of Marvel: “I wouldn’t say he’s the sharpest tool in the shed, but he is ecstatic to be there and he just goes for it.”

Among the more ordinary Tributes who are just as terrified and overwhelmed as Katniss, two immediately draw her respect: little Rue, who was reaped for the Games at the tender age of 12; and the quick and clever Foxface. A pair of rising newcomers takes on the roles: Amandla Stenberg as Rue and Jacqueline Emerson as Foxface.

Stenberg went all out for the part, rolling in dirt outside before auditioning for Ross at his home. “I had leaves in my hair and everything,” Stenberg recalls. “Gary has a really nice house, and I didn’t want to sit on anything and get it dirty, so I found a little stool to sit on. I was really nervous.”

Anxious as she was, it was clear she had a deep affinity for Rue, who becomes Katniss’ ally. “I’d read the book four times and I just loved Rue because she’s so smart and agile and yet sweet,” says Stenberg. “I think when Katniss sees Rue, she thinks of her sister and that’s why she loves her.”

On the set, Stenberg also developed a tight-knit, best-friends relationship with Lawrence that further added to their roles. “They bonded in a real big sister/little sister way, which was fantastic for the movie,” says Ross. “Sometimes they were laughing so much I had to tell them to knock it off but it truly mirrored the closeness that Katniss and Rue have.”

One of Suzanne Collins’ favorite scenes is Rue’s final sequence, which Collins witnessed on set. “The scene’s so key, not only because of its emotional impact on Katniss — Rue’s essentially become Prim’s surrogate in the arena — but because it has to be powerful enough to trigger the first rumblings of the rebellion,” notes the author.

“It’s very demanding for the actors. All three of the kids — Jen, Amandla and Jack — gave terrific performances. T Bone Burnett came up with this lovely, haunting melody for the lullaby. And Gary, who was masterminding the whole thing, filmed it beautifully. There’s this one shot of Katniss cradling Rue in the periwinkle with the lush background of the forest.

On the monitor it looked like an exquisite portrait, like something you’d frame and hang in a museum. I remember Amandla came and sat next to me between takes and asked me, ‘So, what did you imagine it would be like?’ And I said, ‘Like that.’ But really, it exceeded my expectations.”

Rue’s co-Tribute, Thresh, played by Nigerian newcomer Dayo Okeniyi, tries to watch out for her. “Thresh is your basic, hard-working guy from the farming district who loves his family and just wants to see them again. For him, Rue is like a baby sister,” says Okeniyi.  “He wants to protect her, but he knows a time may come when he will have to make a decision between his life or her life. In his heart, there’s a constant tug-of-war.”

Emerson was equally taken with Foxface. “I love that she’s the smartest Tribute and that’s the way she makes her way through the Games,” she observes. “Her whole strategy is to evade capture. She’s always two steps ahead of the game, thinking of the one thing nobody else could.”

Yet within all the physical drama, Emerson says that Ross always kept the cast focused on the inner experience of their characters. “The great thing about Gary directing ‘The Hunger Games’ is that he set out to find the heart of this story,” summarizes Emerson. “It’s not just a flashy action movie. It’s about people and ideas you’ll walk out of the theatre thinking about for a long time.”

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Early on, Suzanne Collins made the decision to entrust Katniss and the re-creation of her life in Panem to Lionsgate because she liked their hands-on approach, accessibility and commitment to the spirit of the story across the entire top tier of Lionsgate’s film group.

“Everyone we needed to get the movie going was right there on the phone,” she recalls. “The studio was small enough for that to be possible and I felt it would be our best chance of seeing the story become a film.”

Lionsgate made it their mission to show Collins that they would be faithful to her vision for how to bring the book to the screen. “Suzanne thought we were the House of ‘Saw’,” recalls Joe Drake of his first phone call with the author, “but we convinced her that we could sensitively and accurately handle the material, citing our work on such films as the Academy Award-nominated ‘Precious’ and Best Picture winner ‘Crash’.”

Nina Jacobson was equally impressed with Lionsgate’s passion for the project. “I felt so connected to it and I was certain that there was a great movie to be made — but one that had to be treated with care,” she explains. “I made a very passionate case to Suzanne that her vision needed to safe-guarded and Lionsgate gave us their full support for a faithful adaptation that would not be about blood and gore, but thematically driven.”

Collins was likewise gratified by Jacobson’s contributions. “Of all the producers we met, I felt Nina had the greatest connection to the work,” says the author. “I believed her when she said she would do everything she could to protect its integrity.”

From the beginning, Drake, along with Lionsgate’s President of Production Alli Shearmur and marketing head Tim Palen, had lovingly referred to Suzanne as ‘Mother Hunger Games.’ Their most important aim was to stay true to their word to her about how the book would be treated, and their choice of director was the first – and maybe the most important – decision they’d make on the path to honoring that commitment to Suzanne and her book.

The process of safeguarding the story and the character of Katniss began with choosing a director that would bring the story to life technically, but more importantly, emotionally.  Their choice was sealed when Gary Ross showed up for the first meeting with Lionsgate prepared with extensive storyboards, and a video presentation of real kids talking candidly and passionately about why they love the book so much.

Explains Shearmur, “After this show of tremendous understanding and sensitivity, we all agreed that Ross was the man for the job. He’s known both for the fantastical vision of ‘Pleasantville’ and the visceral emotions of ‘Seabiscuit’, and it was that balance that was so essential to this film.”

For Jacobson, Ross had the perfect blend of epic and intimate storytelling skills to immerse the audience directly into Katniss’ most subjective experiences. “Gary is not just a director but a writer/director and that was an important distinction for this movie,” she says. “Getting the book right was such a big responsibility, and Gary’s understanding of how Katniss’ POV had to be the heart and soul of the story was spot on.

He really connected with Suzanne, and they ended up writing the script together. Most importantly, while Gary has amazing visual ideas, he always knew this story had to come from a character place. So he approached it in such a way that characters drive the suspense at every turn and the audience has the chance to experience this world completely through their eyes.”   

Ross then brought on board producer Jon Kilik, with whom he had collaborated on ‘Pleasantville’. He, too, was won over by the book. “It has elements of classic movies that I’ve always loved, from ‘Rebel Without A Cause’ to ‘The Breakfast Club’, blended with a dystopian vision of where our society could be headed.

I found that to be an amazing mix and as soon as I read it, I told Gary I was in,” Kilik recalls. “I’ve known Gary since 1997 and I knew he was the right choice for ‘The Hunger Games’ because he has children who love the book, and because he has this very rare and unique ability to evoke both teen angst and alternate worlds.

Even though this story takes place in the future, I think Gary perceived that it’s more reflective of today than you might think – and that’s why people, not just kids but adults too, really connect to Katniss and Panem.  Katniss is trying to survive a tough world of game playing and manipulation, just as we all are.”

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Once word was out that a film version of ‘The Hunger Games’ was in the works, speculation about casting snowballed into an internet phenomenon of its own.

Amidst the hoopla, the filmmakers began coming to grips with just how intensely invested fans of the book were in seeing something they could believe in on screen. It became clear that everyone who read the book had their own clear idea of who Katniss or Gale or Peeta should be,” notes the director, Gary Ross. “It’s a testament to how connected people become to this story, and I found it incredibly exciting.”

Adds producer Nina Jacobson: “People were very opinionated about who should play the roles and that was obviously a lot of pressure. But I feel the same way when I love a book – I don’t want anyone to mess it up. So as we began the casting process, we talked a lot about looking for the essence of these characters in the actors. You can create a lot of different things on screen, but you can’t create that essence. You have to go out and find it.”

Katniss and District 12

It began with the most difficult character of all to cast – the girl who rises from the dust and grime of Panem’s mining district to become an iconic rebel heroine: Katniss Everdeen. Her origins might be common, but Katniss is anything but a simple girl. Driven by harsh circumstances, she can be cold and calculating at times but at her core she is selfless and loyal. Only 16, she also is still very much in the process of forming her own ideals and notions of love and self-worth . . . in a world where such things are nearly impossible.

“Katniss is a fierce, independent survivor,” describes Gary Ross. “She’s a hunter, an archer and an athlete, and as the story begins, she already has amazing skills she’s developed to protect and fend for her family. Most importantly, she’s someone who comes to know her own truth. One thing Suzanne and I talked about is that she is a bit like Joan of Arc – someone who can’t abide tyrants, which ultimately gives her the courage to defy the Capitol.”

Executive producer Robin Bissell further observes, “In the middle of the Games, important questions arise for Katniss – not just can she survive but is she able to love, and who does she love? She gains remarkable strength but also blossoms as a human being.”

Young actresses across the world coveted the role, but the search stopped when Ross and Lionsgate executives met with Jennifer Lawrence, who had garnered an Oscar nomination for her devastating performance as a girl protecting her family in the low-budget indie thriller ‘Winter’s Bone’. Most importantly, Collins herself gave her blessing to Lawrence.

Collins admits that initially she had some trepidation over the idea that anyone could embody the Katniss she’d envisioned. But Lawrence set those worries to rest. In a letter to readers of Entertainment Weekly, Collins wrote: “In her remarkable audition piece, I watched Jennifer embody every essential quality necessary to play Katniss.

I saw a girl who has the potential rage to send an arrow into the Gamemakers and the protectiveness to make Rue her ally. Who has conquered both Peeta and Gale’s hearts even though she’s done her best to wall herself off emotionally from anything that would lead to romance.

Most of all, I believed that this was a girl who could hold out that handful of berries and incite the beaten down districts of Panem to rebel. I think that was the essential question for me. Could she believably inspire a rebellion? Did she project the strength, defiance and intellect you would need to follow her into certain war?

For me, she did. Jennifer’s just an incredible actress. So powerful, vulnerable, beautiful, unforgiving and brave. I never thought we’d find somebody this amazing for the role. And I can’t wait for everyone to see her play it.”

“I felt I’d found the one person who could possibly play Katniss,” recalls Ross of meeting Lawrence. “I’ve worked with many amazing actors but I think someone like Jen comes around once in a generation. She’s an unbelievable talent and she brings so many qualities that are raw and true to the character, from her natural athleticism to her emotional power. I can always imagine different versions of films I direct, but I can’t imagine a version of this film without Jen.”

Adds Jacobson: “In her audition, Jen stole the role. There was instant power, intensity and certainty in her performance. Some people can be fierce and others can be tender, but Jen is both.”

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Director Gary Ross first witnessed the impact of ‘The Hunger Games’ and Katniss Everdeen on his own children. “I’d heard people raving about ‘The Hunger Games’ and when I asked my kids about it, they kind of exploded and started going on and on until I had to stop them from telling me the whole story,” he recalls. “Their enthusiasm was so infectious, I went upstairs, started reading, and by 1:30 a.m., I said ‘I have to make this movie.’ It was that impulsive.”

Right away, Ross had an unwavering vision of what lay at the heart of The Hunger Games’ appeal. “My mind was clear from the beginning,” he says. “I saw there was something really beautiful happening underneath the story. It’s obviously a viscerally exciting tale of survival within a lurid spectacle of the future.

But I think what really compels people to pass the book from one person to the next is that it is at bottom about one girl, Katniss Everdeen, finding her own humanity. She begins as someone who only wants to fight for herself, for her personal survival – yet what she finds in the course of the Games is something more important than even staying alive. Her heart opens and she becomes someone who’s willing to sacrifice for something bigger. “

He continues: “The essential thing is that you are in Katniss’ shoes. In ‘Seabiscuit’, I wanted to viscerally put the audience on the racetrack. In ‘The Hunger Games’, the audience has to be in Katniss’ head. You know what she knows. You don’t know more. You’re in this experience 100% with her. To that end, the film required a very subjective style. It had to be urgent, immediate and tightly in with Katniss the whole time.”

His desire to bring Katniss’ quest for survival and something more to life might have been instantaneous but Ross has a long history of bringing imaginatively detailed and never-before-seen worlds to life on screen.

It began with his Academy Award-nominated screenplay for ‘Big’ about a child transformed into a man; evolved with his directorial debut ‘Pleasantville’, which he also wrote, about two teens transported into a 1950s sitcom; and continued with ‘Seabiscuit’, which he wrote, produced and directed, taking audiences into the fabric of the Great Depression through the unlikely story of an underdog racehorse.

Ross was now ready to tackle creating Panem – entirely as it would be viewed by Katniss as she travels from her remote, hardscrabble District to the eye-popping Capitol, and into the unforgiving forest where the Games begin, her perspective broadening at every step.

He began by going directly to the source, inviting Suzanne Collins to collaborate on the adaptation, and to bring all her deep insight into the Games and Katniss’ vital inner life with her. “It wasn’t just that Suzanne was involved. We became a writing team,” states Ross. “It was a fantastic, electric partnership. To know that you are writing a film not only supported by the author but with her input is a real gift.”

Suzanne Collins understood that the film would necessarily be its own experience, no matter how faithful to the book’s essence. “When you’re adapting a novel into a two-hour movie you can’t bring everything with you,” she notes. “Not all the characters are going to make it to the screen.

For example, we gave up Madge, cut the Avox girl’s backstory, and reduced the Career pack. It was hard to let them go but I don’t think that the choices damaged the emotional arc of the story. Then there was the question of how best to take a book told in the first person and transform it into a satisfying dramatic experience. In the novel, you never leave Katniss for a second and are privy to all of her thoughts. We needed to find ways to dramatize her inner world.”

As Ross and Collins worked through these challenges – as well as the question of how to present the violence that is so much a part of what Katniss faces in an appropriate yet impactful way for a PG-13 audience – they came to admire each other’s creativity. “Gary was a complete pleasure to work with,” sums up Collins. “Amazingly talented, collaborative and always respectful of the book.”

For Ross, the screen adaptation had to start with the world that has made Katniss who she is: Panem, a dystopian future realm which owes a debt to classic sci-fi influences from George Orwell to Margaret Atwood, yet that Collins made specific to both a 16-year-old’s view-point and our current moment in American culture.

“The back story of Panem that has to be alluded to is that a variety of forces — global warming, scarcity of resources, lengthy wars, all these things – ripped away at what used to be American culture and culminated in a very oppressive state. When the districts rebelled, the Capitol instituted the Hunger Games as a means of control, to keep the people in line,” explains Ross.

Both Ross and Collins wanted to highlight the way the Games amplify today’s obsession with reality television into something that puts Katniss and her fellow Tributes in mortal danger. As sinister and despised as the Games are, people across Panem nevertheless get caught up in them because they yearn to see someone they relate to triumph and have his or her life transformed.

“The Games are like a Roman spectacle but they’re also a lot like the reality TV we see right now,” comments Ross. “People are riveted by the Games because we all have this need to root for someone to make it. When President Snow says ‘the only thing stronger than fear is hope’ it’s because he knows hope is what gets people so involved in the contest.

It’s one of the brilliant things that Suzanne does in the book – she shows how the best way to control people is not to subjugate them but to get them to participate. That’s how the Capitol uses the Games to control the districts.”

Ross also began to envision the physical architecture of the Capitol, which he knew had to radiate authority to Katniss but also reveal the cynical decadence of those who would prosper while she and others struggle. He and Collins agreed the city should be rooted in history, not fantasy, even as it nearly overwhelms Katniss in the beginning.

“We wanted the Capitol to give off a sense of its past,” he explains. “If you look at any seat of power — from the Brandenburg Gate to Red Square — it’s open space punctuated by buildings of tremendous mass.  That was our idea behind it. To Katniss, it all evokes a sense of might and power.”

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Welcome to the intense reality of 16-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who must try to survive – by sheer wits and will alone – a future world that is at once high-tech and apocalyptic, glitzy and primal, unsettlingly dangerous and a telltale mirror to our own.

Unfolding entirely through Katniss’ intimately personal POV, ‘The Hunger Games’ reveals how this miner’s daughter from a dark future transforms from a mere pawn in a lethal televised contest to a soulful, sacrificing heroine who comes to realize that she has even more to protect and fight for than her own family.

Few who have encountered Katniss have been able to resist the visceral excitement of watching her find her strength, resolve and heart while under the most extreme pressure a teenager could imagine. This was certainly true for the production executives at Lionsgate Entertainment. For them, Katniss’ journey jumped off the pages of Suzanne Collins’ literary sensation ‘The Hunger Games’ with such beauty and force, they felt instantly it deserved to be captured on screen.

When producer Nina Jacobson had bought the rights to the novel in 2009, ‘The Hunger Games’ was just beginning to find a devoted audience. Jacobson brought it to Lionsgate’s film executives Joe Drake and Alli Shearmur, among other studio executives, and they instantly became obsessed with Katniss and her journey.

It was only as development began that the popularity of the books swelled in tandem with anticipation of the movie. Millions began to wonder how a filmmaker might bring to life Collins’ fresh twist on a sinister future and – most of all – bring to life the complicated but gutsy heroine who made the book’s adventure feel so harrowingly true.

Ultimately, Lionsgate and Jacobson put together a team, headed by visually bold director Gary Ross, that was equally compelled by Katniss’ arc and how her evolution as a human being touched millions of readers. The idea behind the screen adaptation was to visually get inside Katniss’ head, and ultimately her heart, the same way that Collins had done in words.

In that way, the film would not only capture Katniss’ battles with her fellow Tributes in the Games, but would also mine the rich themes Collins had explored through Katniss’ life-changing experience: personal sacrifice, star-crossed love and the question of where our current society might be headed.

Katniss’ world was initially inspired, Collins says, by her fascination with the ancient Greek myth of Theseus – who every nine years sent a phalanx of young boys and girls into a deadly labyrinth to fight the monstrous Minotaur. It was equally influenced by her experiences channel-surfing through an unsettling blur of reality TV and war coverage, wondering what this mix of entertainment and true-life terror boded for the future of society.

Together, these two ideas added up to the birth of Katniss Everdeen – who enters a violent and mythic future from a perspective unlike any other. Her adventure in the Capitol of Panem, once she takes her sister’s place in the Games, might have the breathless pace of a sci-fi thriller, but it is at heart about a girl coming to grips with the moral dilemmas of power, injustice and self-preservation at the same time in life as she is also discovering love, independence and her own identity.

A former children’s TV writer and a mother of two, Collins found a way to make Katniss’ world feel so deeply personal that readers couldn’t help but imagine how they would feel in her place – as she is first driven to save her sister, her family and herself, but then begins to see the glimmer of a chance to make a difference for others across the shadowy landscape of Panem.

Collins was not afraid to take Katniss into risky terrain, because she knew teens were already grappling with these questions in the world around them.  In her book proposal for the series, Collins wrote: “Although set in the future, ‘The Hunger Games’ explores disturbing issues of modern warfare such as who fights our wars, how they are orchestrated, and the ever-increasing opportunities to observe them being played out.”

Yet she also balanced that with Katniss’ growth and evolution into someone as courageous and principled as she is stubbornly tenacious.  She noted that Katniss, though initially “distrustful,” takes from this adventure “a deep capacity to love and sacrifice for those few people she cares for.”

The success of ‘The Hunger Games’ hinged on readers identifying with Katniss — and that is exactly what happened. The book was soon being passed from hand-to-hand, reader-to-reader, developing a devoted following that flowed into the culture at large.

Author Stephen King dubbed Katniss a “bow-and-arrow Annie Oakley,” The Atlantic Monthly called her “the most important female character in recent pop cultural history” and The New York Times praised Collins’ “convincingly detailed world-building and her memorably complex and fascinating heroine.”

Stephanie Myer, author of the ‘Twilight’ series, blogged:  “The story kept me up for several nights in a row, because even after I was finished, I just lay in bed wide awake thinking about it.”

Once word began to get out about the books and the impending movie, their popularity began to spread like wildfire. When the film went into production, there were about 8 million copies of the novels in circulation; by the time production wrapped there were 12 million and now the number has exploded to over 26 million.

The first novel has since spent more than 180 consecutive weeks and more than three consecutive years to date on The New York Times bestseller list. Collins went on to write two more best-selling books in the series, Catching Fire and Mockingjay, which established Panem as a realm that has taken up permanent residence in the popular imagination.

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Sometimes, fans of series get seriously annoyed when a movie adaption of their favorite book or comic stray too far from the original material.  In the case of ‘The Hunger Games,‘ though, it’s actually the opposite.

When reading, people usually create their own mental images of what characters look like, and when the movie does not accurately represent how they imagined the characters to look, they complain.  A number of fans did not think of some of the characters in the novel as being black, and are now angry with author Suzanna Collins and the producers of the film for casting black actors in important roles.  African-American actors Lenny Kravitz and Dayo Okeniyi play Cinna and Thresh, respectively, while actress Amandla Stenberg takes up the role of Rue.

“Im still pissed that rue is black. Like you think se might have mentioned that…?” @LexieBrowning tweeted.  But Suzanne Collins did bring it up in The Hunger Games. Rue is mentioned having “dark brown skin and eyes.”

The character Thresh is also described as having darker skin, but Cinna’s race was not mentioned in the trilogy.

Lexie is far from being the only person mad about the colored cast.  The Tumblr Hunger Games Tweets has collected an ensemble of racist tweets directed toward Kravitz, Okeniyi and Stenberg.

Some comments were less offensive than others, with tweets ranging from the relatively innocent “Awkward moment when Rue is some black girl and not the innocent blonde girl you picture,” to more distasteful tweets.  @Joe_Longley wrote, “EWW rue is black? I’m not watching.”  Several others made use of the “N word” in their tweets.  @maggie_mcd11 tweeted, “why does rue have to be black not gonna lie kinda ruined the movie.”  The original user has since given up the account and a comedian is now at the helm of it, posting tweets making fun of the offensive tweet, such as, “Why does Herman Cain have to be black not gonna lie kinda ruined pizza.”

Some twitter account holders have at least shown some disappointment in themselves for their feelings towards the actors, “Kk call me racist but when i found out rue was black her death wasn’t as sad #ihatemyself,” wrote @Jashperparas.

Stenberg revealed in a statement given to Us Weekly the she would not let the tweets get her down.

“As a fan of the books, I feel fortunate to be part of ‘The Hunger Games’ family.  It was an amazing experience. I am proud of the film and my performance. I want to thank all of my fans and the entire ‘Hunger Games’ community for their support and loyalty.”

Despite the outrage and disappointment of racist fans, The Hunger Games did spectacularly at the box office, raking in $155 million from the opening weekend, managing to have the third highest opening weekend after “The Dark Knight” and “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2.”

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