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) "improve on many sources. Quentin Tarantino has built his career on this principle." It reminded an author at "Salon" of the 1932 film "The Most Dangerous Game". "The Hunger Games" has also been conceptually compared to Robert Sheckley's 1953 short story "Seventh Victim" and its 1965 Italian film adaptation by Elio Petri, "The 10th Victim", as the story and film feature a government-endorsed, televised (in the film's case) "Big Hunt", featuring contestants from around the world acting as "hunters" and "victims". Wheeler Winston Dixon, a film professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, listed several precedents: "Battle Royale", Jackson's "The Lottery",