His involvement has been long touted, and he’s been in negotiations for a while now, but Lionsgate has made it official: Sam Claflin will be playing Finnick Odair in The Hunger Games: Catching Fir****e.
The actor, best known for Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides and this year’s Snow White And The Huntsman, is on to play Odair, one of the most famous Hunger Games victors in the story.
Odair won the Games for District 4 when he was 14, and is dragooned back in for a special Games to “celebrate” the Quarter Quell. He, along with other past victors including recent champions Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) and Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), are thrust back into the arena for the 75th outing. Odair's a flamboyantly handsome and wildly popular character, but there's more to him than meets the eye (no, he's not a Transformer), making him a fan-favourite character.
The movie features returning faces Lawrence, Hutcherson, Elizabeth Banks, Stanley Tucci, Woody Harrelson, Liam Hemsworth, Willow Shields, Donald Sutherland and Lenny Kravitz, along with new recruits Lynn Cohen, Tony Shalhoub, Amanda Plummer, Alan Ritchson, Jena Malone, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Bruno Gunn.
Francis Lawrence is scheduled to start shooting Catching Fire next month for a November 22, 2013 release date.
Claflin will next be seen in Mary & Martha and Hammer horror The Quiet Ones.