The Hunger Games will be long cast and filming before I can crack the cover.   I feel bad about this, but you can’t keep up with everything. Ultimately, this will have to play to wide audiences anyway, so I might as well stick with that madding crowd.

The Hunger Games actually added two cast members yesterday, announced via the increasingly-Hollywoodized Facebook.  (RSS feeds may become dinosaurs.)  Newcomers Amandla Stenberg and Dayo Okeniyi joined the cast as Rue and Thresh, respectively.  Fans were quite excited by this decision, as it proved the adaptation wasn’t going to be entirely star-studded, blonde and blue-eyed.   Many have also praised Stenberg’s youth, as Rue and Jennifer Lawrence’s Katniss have some vicious showdowns in the arena, and the very visible age gap between the actresses should make it pretty brutal to witness.

But another big name may join the production, as The Hollywood Reporter says that Elizabeth Banks is in talks to play Effie Trinket, the escort/PA to the young tributes.  Even from the limited description on series’ Wiki page, it’s the kind of character Banks has perfected — pretty, bubbly, enthusiastic, ambitious, and cuttingly conceited.  Effie sounds like Avery Jessup, but with florescent hair.   Banks is a big fan of the books (I actually believe it was from her Twitter feed I first heard of them), so I have no doubt she’ll sign if her schedule permits, and I hope she does! It’s good to have really enthusiastic readers in adaptations. And for those of us who aren’t automatically a ticket sale, Banks and Lawrence go a long way to making it interesting.