‘The Hunger Games’ might not hit theaters until March 23rd, but Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) and her co-stars are featured on the cover of Entertainment Weekly this week. EW is promoting the issue as a ‘a deep, behind-the-scenes look into the making of the film, from conception to casting, filming to marketing.’ As anyone from Marvel Films can tell you, extensive coverage (along with a cover) in EW can do wonders for a film’s prospects. EW readers are insanely devout—they read the entire magazine from cover to cover. So there is a great chance that ‘The Hunger Games’ will pick up a new following this week.Not much in the way of teasers for the issue, but we did like this:”It took one sleepless night of reading a downloaded version of The Hunger Games in his trailer for (Lenny) Kravitz (plays Cinna) to commit. But Woody Harrelson, who initially turned down the role of Katniss and Peeta’s sodden wreck of a mentor Haymitch, was a harder sell. “Listen, I’m nuts,” he explains. “It was just a stupid thing where I hadn’t read the books yet. I didn’t see that there was enough for me to do in the script. But then Gary (Ross, the Director) called me back and said ‘You got to do this, I don’t have a second choice for the role.’ And of course flattery always gets the best of me so I read the books and really saw the depths of this guy. Holy s—, I would have been bummed to miss this.”We’ve said time and again that Harrelson is the ultimate choice to play Haymitch, and we’re pumped that Gary Ross didn’t let Harrelson slip through the cracks.’The Hunger Games’ is based on the best selling Suzanne Collins novel of the same name. It hits theaters March 23.
