Because it can barely let a week go by without announcing another piece of the Catching Fire casting puzzle, Lionsgate yesterday fired up the trumpets to report that Lynn Cohen has been brought aboard to play Mags in the Hunger Games sequel.
With Francis Lawrence in the director’s chair this time, the script has been adapted by Simon Beaufoy and Michael Arndt from Suzanne Collins’ second novel. The plot finds Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) and Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) returning from winning the 74th Games and almost immediately packed off on the Victor’s Tour of all the districts.
With rebellion simmering ever hotter around the outlying areas, President Snow (Donald Sutherland) and his game makers decide that the 75h Games – what’s known as the Quarter Quell, a souped-up Games happening once every quarter century – will be something quite different, with Katniss and Peeta forced back into the arena to compete against other previous winners.
As with the other recent castings, Cohen’s Mags is one of those former victors, an 80-year-old victor from District 4 who has no real yearning to return to the arena herself.
She joins a roll call of newcomers including Amanda Plummer, Jena Malone, Philip Seymour Hoffman and, assuming he locks in a deal, Sam Claflin. Cohen is an accomplished stage actress who has appeared in films such as Munich and Sex And The City. She’s currently working on David Wain’s They Came Togethe****r, which stars Paul Rudd and Amy Poehler, after which she’ll report to the set of Catching Fire. The movie is due to start shooting next month and will be out on November 22, 2013.