April 16, 2013 by Vinnie Leduc
Aside for host Rebel Wilson referring to HBO’s hit series Game of Thrones as “Dragons & Titties“, the only good worthy thing to come out of MTV’s annual self-suckling sh!tshow disguised as a celebration of pop-culture and film (aka the MTV Movie Awards) over the weekend was the debut of the first teaser trailer for The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, an honorable mention on our list of most anticipated movies of 2013.
The sequel to last year’s The Hunger Games, the only 2012 movie to 4-peat at the domestic box office and one of our picks for best action-adventure and best sci-fi movies of last year, is the second cinematic adaptation of Suzanne Collins’ bestselling and acclaimed literary trilogy about a teenager who incites revolution against a totalitarian government in a dystopian future amidst a backdrop of televised survival warfare and arena combat involving children.
Catching Fire stars newly crowned Oscar and Golden Globe winner Jennifer Lawrence as heroine Katniss Everdeen and returns Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, multiple Oscar nominee Woody Harrelson, multiple Emmy nominee Elizabeth Banks, multiple Grammy winner Lenny Kravitz, Golden Globe and Emmy winner Donald Sutherland, Oscar nominee Stanley Tucci, and Golden Globe nominee Toby Jones to the roles they respectively played in The Hunger Games. Joining the cast are Oscar and Golden Globe winner Philip Seymour Hoffman, Golden Globe and Emmy winner Jeffrey Wright, Emmy winner Amanda Plummer, and Golden Globe nominee Jena Malone. Francis Lawrence (Constantine, I Am Legend) replaces multiple Oscar nominee Gary Ross as director.
That’s a helluva track record for the sizable cast. The odds are ever in their favor, and same goes for Catching Fire to break its predecessor’s opening feast at the box office, which was the third highest ever at the time and is currently fifth all-time thanks to The Avengers‘ and The Dark Knight Rises‘ mega-blockbuster debuts later last year. However, with acclaimed director Gary Ross leaving the rest of the franchise films, the question is can Catching Fire match the critical success of The Hunger Games? It seems like most of the Interwebs thinks so, but after watching the teaser trailer below, I’m not any more interested or excited than I already had been. The second book might have been my favorite, and maybe I need more action in the teaser aside for J-Law getting punched in the face. But then again, it is just a teaser, so maybe we’ll get more explosions and such later this spring or summer.
Featuring sequences filmed in IMAX, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is scheduled to begin on November 22, 2013.
