When we first meet Johanna Mason, a ferocious, ax-wielding victor from District 7, it's on an elevator with Haymitch, Katniss and Peeta. She stares down the trio and proceeds to strip naked. "It's one of the best introductions to a character ever," says 28-year-old actress Jena Malone (Donnie Darko). "I had to learn how to do a striptease in four seconds."
For Malone, Johanna defies expectations for women in genre films. "She's not just another badass sexy female," she says. "Her sexuality is a weapon. Her humor is a weapon. They're part of her process of coping with the fact that she killed all her friends in her own Hunger Games." Malone can't shake one particular scene in which her entire body is drenched in blood. "I felt like this gladiator," she says. "The cameras would cut and I would still have this crazy energy surging through me. Johanna took over."
From EW's October 11 "Catching Fire" special issue.
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Catching Fire Entertainment Weekly
We've been waiting for this ever since EW teased us a while back saying tributes would be "very happy" with Entertainment Weekly in early October. Well, here it is folks, the special 'Catching Fire' issue of EW!
In this week’s cover story, EW goes deep — deep into a Hawaiian jungle, that is, for an exclusive visit to the set of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. The highly anticipated sequel, in which Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) pays dearly for sparking unrest in Panem, doesn’t hit theaters until Nov. 22. But we’ve got all kinds of reporting to whet your appetite. Plus, Katniss, Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), Gale (Liam Hemsworth), and Finnick (newcomer to the franchise Sam Claflin) all get their own collectible covers.
After a special report from the sweltering set in Hawaii, we head to Santa Monica, where EW reconvened the stars — along with new director Francis Lawrence and producer Nina Jacobson — for a rollicking conversation about the new movie. Among the subjects? Everything from the decision to “man up” Peeta’s character for the movie to Lawrence’s spectacular fall in Katniss’ wedding dress while the cameras were rolling. The filmmakers also talk about creating new scenes for Plutarch Heavensbee (played by Philip Seymour Hoffman), and actress Jena Malone talks about the thrill of playing the ax-wielding tribute Johanna Mason. Despite the easy camaraderie of the crew, everyone took seriously their mission to respect the pained heart of author Suzanne Collins’ sequel. “In every scene we asked ourselves, ‘How would these people feel if they came back to the Hunger Games,’” says Jacobson. “What happens when you come back from these experiences of war, not what happens in a movie when you’ve kicked a lot of ass?”
Entertainment Weekly posted this teaser to their tumblr earlier today:
What could it be? A preview of their Catching Fire issue, perhaps? (That's my guess anyhow!)
Sadly, there are no new stills in the new Catching Fire article from Entertainment Weekly's Fall Movie Preview Issue. But we've got the scans for you!
The most interesting bit is an elaboration on what we already knew - that parts would be cut out of the movie (ahem, Bonnie and Twill). It sounds like the first part of the film will be condensed and more time will be spent in the Capitol and arena. We are nervous and very excited to see how it all plays out.
Can't wait until tomorrow to get your hands on Entertainment Weekly's Catching Fire issue? We've got the scans from the tablet edition! Never has there been a better day to be an Entertainment Weekly subscriber!
Check out some great new photos and tons of behind the scenes scoop:
Entertainment Weekly's Catching Fire issue hits newsstands Friday, January 11th.
Entertainment Weekly is giving us our first official look at Katniss and Finnick in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire!
From EW.com:
The revolution has been sparked. In this week’s cover story, EW traveled to Waikiki, Hawaii where cast and crew were in the final days of production on the eagerly anticipated Hunger Games sequel, Catching Fire (in theaters Nov. 21). Just as the revolution that could embolden the people of Panem rests on young Katniss Everdeen’s shoulders, the success of the franchise depends largely upon Jennifer Lawrence. After spending the day outrunning death in a nearby jungle, the 22-year-old actress ordered herself a Budweiser and kicked back in the Trump balcony lounge to discuss the sequel, her life now as a blockbuster star, and her willful inability to behave like the nice sound-bite machine Hollywood might expect her to be. “It’s almost like I subconsciously don’t want to work anymore so I’m trying to ruin my career,” she says with a laugh at one point, before leaning in close to the reporter’s tape recorder. “I’m pregnant!” she joked.
From her first meeting with new director Francis Lawrence (“I spit egg inside his mouth when I was talking. Into his mouth”) to the raucous party she hosted for the Catching Fire cast and crew (“When Sam walked in I was chasing Woody and we’d flipped over my couch and Woody had a sock all the way down my throat…”), Lawrence was frank and funny and self-aware. “I’m so aware of all the b.s. that surrounds Hollywood,” she says, “and how everyone gets on this high horse and thinks that they’re curing cancer and it makes me so uncomfortable every time I see it. So I go in the exact opposite direction and end up saying something like ‘I’m pregnant!’ when I’m in two franchises.”
Then in an exclusive conversation, director Francis Lawrence described his vision for the sequel, his immediate three-day pow-wow with series writer Suzanne Collins to ready a script, and how one of his inherited cast members had a particularly hard time adjusting to the loss of Hunger Games director Gary Ross. (Woody Harrelson, who plays Katniss and Peeta’s wry and PTSD-ruined wreck of a mentor Haymitch.)
EW also sat down with Sam Claflin, the green-eyed, dimpled Brit who won the role of District 4′s charming and enigmatic golden boy Finnick Odair, for his first Hunger Games interview. He described filming the infamous sugar cube scene, in which Finnick teases Katniss while wearing nothing beyond some strategically placed netting, as “the scariest moment of my life. I’m on Twitter and so many people have been like ‘Don’t mess this up, or we will kill you.’”
The issue will hit newstands Friday, January 11th. More at EW.com
Update on 2013-01-10 05:15 by Dan McCall
Here are more photos from the EW article. Plus another snippet of the article:
''These are kids growing up in war who physically, emotionally can't love somebody,'' says Jennifer Lawrence about the uncomfortable triangle between District 12's battle-weary Katniss, Peeta, and her childhood friend Gale that began in The Hunger Games. ''Katniss thinks she can't have a crush on a boy because she's worried about survival every single day. And she can't be a normal 16-year-old meeting her friend out in the woods and practicing kissing because that's not the world that they live in.''
''Jen and Liam have amazing chemistry,'' says director Francis Lawrence of his young stars. ''They have a nice moment right before Katniss is reaped that is the very first thing we shot. And then when Gale has been brought in from the whipping, that's another really nice moment they have alone.'' ''This is the book where you have to understand the pull Katniss feels to both Peeta and Gale,'' say producer Nina Jacobson.
