The Hunger Games (film) C. Reilly was in talks with Lionsgate to portray Haymitch Abernathy. The following month Lionsgate announced that the role had gone to Oscar nominee Woody Harrelson. The casting of Grammy winner Lenny Kravitz as Cinna, Oscar nominee Stanley Tucci as Caesar Flickerman, and Toby Jones as Claudius Templesmith, soon followed. Both got the role at the time they were promoting "". Multiple-Golden Globe Award winner Donald Sutherland was cast as President Coriolanus Snow in late May 2011. Gary Ross, Sam Mendes, David Slade, Andrew Adamson, Susanna White, Rupert Sanders, and Francis Lawrence were listed as possible directing candidates, but in
The Hunger Games (film) "The New Yorker". David Sexton of "The Evening Standard" compared "The Hunger Games" unfavourably to Kinji Fukasaku's Japanese film "Battle Royale", as did several other critics; the novel had earlier faced criticism for its similarities to the novel "Battle Royale" by Koushun Takami. Jonathan Looms of "The Oxford Student" argues that it is "unfair that the film is only drawing comparisons with "Battle Royale"" but that it "is a veritable pastiche of other movies" as well, comparing it to "The Truman Show", "Death Race", the "Bourne" films, and "Zoolander", and that it is common for artists to borrow from and