Earlier this year, Chris Evans entered and won the “Who gets to be Captain America?” contest. Earlier this summer, Andrew Garfield entered and won the “Who gets to be Spider-Man?” contest. Sometime soon, an actress — probably an unknown; maybe Natalie Portman; definitely not Carey Mulligan —will win the “Who gets to be Lisbeth Salander?” contest. And then what? Will we be asked to go weeks without a young Hollywood talent competition to obsess upon? Would the moviemaking gods be so cruel? Please. The next win-a-franchise battle — this one called the “Who gets to be Katniss Everdeen?” contest — is scheduled to begin on August 24, with the release of Mockingjay, the third installment in Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games trilogy, a series of adult-loved YA books that will be adapted into movies, and that you will only be hearing more about.

Set in a dystopian future, the series stars Katniss Everdeen, a stoic, badass teenager, who, like Twilight’s Bella, is caught in a love triangle — Team Gale! Team Peeta! — but, unlike Bella, does not need vampires to kill things for her, being perfectly capable of killing things herself. In the series’ first book — insanely readable, and as is, essentially a perfect screenplay — Katniss is forced to play in the titular Hunger Games, a reality show to the death, while inadvertently fomenting a revolution. Whoever lands the part of Katniss will get to use a bow and arrow, fight for her survival, have sexy-time with handsome teenagers, wear fire, and, you know, have a movie franchise. We handicap the likely contenders.

Saoirse Ronan
The blonde, coltish, Ronan — the star of Atonement and The Lovely Bones — is the right age, 16, and, with some dirt on her face, would look the part. She’d have to suppress some of her natural fragility.
Odds: 4 to 1

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