After taking a brief hiatus from acting, Jennifer Lawrence returned to the spotlight with 2021’s Don’t Look Up and the indie drama Causeway the following year. Now, she’s making the rounds promoting the raunchy comedy No Hard Feelings, her first conventional star vehicle since returning to Hollywood — but hopefully not her last, as Lawrence recently expressed enthusiasm for returning to the role that helped her catch fire, metaphorically and thematically, more than a decade ago.
In a recent interview with Variety, Lawrence was asked whether she’d consider returning to the role of Katniss Everdeen in this age of legacy sequels that pull in previous franchise stars to offer quality nostalgia while pushing the franchise in a new direction.
Lawrence responded enthusiastically:
“Oh my god — totally! If Katniss could ever come back into my life, 100 percent.”
The first Hunger Games was released in 2012 to major box office success, and the rest of the trilogy — based on the young adult novels by Suzanne Collins — immediately went into production. The finale was split into two films, resulting in a new Hunger Games movie every year through 2015. The franchise went dormant until it was announced that we’d get a new prequel film, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, this coming November.
Since it takes place before the original Hunger Games, don’t expect to see Katniss in the main story of Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. But we wouldn’t put it past the filmmakers to tack on a post-credit scene that takes place after the original series and promises more Katniss adventures in follow-up films.
Let’s hope Lawrence is ready for that, should it happen. She took a three-year break from acting because she felt a “loss of control” in her career and hated being treated like “a commodity.” Although she likely has a sharper business acumen after going through all that once before, it’s still notoriously difficult for actors to maintain their autonomy when they’re attached to massive franchises like The Hunger Games.
The only lingering question is whether Josh Hutcherson would return as Peeta, who became a permanent fixture in Katniss’ life in the final Hunger Games movie. Or, they could just kill Peeta off. Does anyone really need Peeta?