I can’t actually decide which sentence feels truer to me: “The Hunger Games movie is already 9 years old,” or, “The Hunger Games only premiered 9 years ago?!?” Somehow both points of view feel true: It cannot have been that long ago, and yet, doesn’t it also feel like it’s been around longer than that?
This was the year a lot came together for Jennifer Lawrence. She rose to fame in 2010 with Winter’s Bone, and was in the X-Men prequel the following year — but 2012 was when she combined blockbuster stardom in The Hunger Games with more indie cred (and later awards hardware) for Silver Linings Playbook. It’s wild to think the industry’s highest-paid actress in 2015 and 2016 has been MIA for a while now. Other than what I assume is a small role in the Dark Phoenix movie (she did no press for it; that was all Sophie Turner and Jessica Chastain), J.Law hasn’t done a movie since 2018’s Red Sparrow, which was itself her only project of that year. She’s got four things in various stages of production now, but that’s a pretty long hiatus, Covid notwithstanding. (I didn’t think Josh Hutcherson and Liam Hemsworth had done a lot, either, but I forgot the former has a Hulu series and the latter has done a few things including a Quibi show, so they’re AROUND; I just wasn’t looking.)
ANYWAY. Let’s check in on the first installment of the Girl On Fire who was, indeed, on fire at this time.
