The Hunger Games

Fans of The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins' terrifically urgent dystopian trilogy about children forced to fight to the death "” have always been protective of 16-year-old heroine Katniss Everdeen. So when Lionsgate and director Gary Ross announced that they had cast 20-year-old Oscar nominee Jennifer Lawrence (Winter's Bone) in the lead role, the community was thrown into an inevitable tailspin. Was she too old, too blonde, too pale, too pretty to do the gritty warrior girl justice? In this week's cover story, EW was granted an exclusive interview with a newly brunette Lawrence, and spent hours watching her train on a Los Angeles archery range and track, just days before she was due on the North Carolina set.

In a free-wheeling interview, Lawrence describes her first encounter with Ross last winter, during the height of Oscar season. "He was asking me what the experience was like," she recalls, "and I just kind of opened up and said, "˜I feel like a rag doll. I have hair and makeup people coming to my house every day and putting me in new, uncomfortable, weird dresses and expensive shoes, and I just shut down and raise my arms up for them to get the dress on, and pout my lips when they need to put the lipstick on.' And we both started laughing because that's exactly what it's like for Katniss in the Capitol. She was a girl who's all of a sudden being introduced to fame. I know what that feels like to have all this flurry around you and feel like, "˜Oh, no, I don't belong here.'"

When Lawrence was offered the role, she describes her response as a mixture of elation "” and desperate anxiety. "I knew that as soon as I said yes, my life would change," she says. "And I walked around an entire day thinking "˜It's not too late, I could still go back and do indies, I haven't said yes yet, it's not too late.'"

And yet, who can turn their back on Katniss? "I love this story," she says, "and if I had said no, I would regret it every day." After officially signing on, Suzanne Collins herself called to offer a starstruck Lawrence her most hearty congratulations. "I feel like when you said yes," the author told her, "the world got lifted off my shoulders."

For more on The Hunger Games, including photos of Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss and a guide to the film's other characters, pick up the new issue of Entertainment Weekly, on stands May 20.

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A Deadline report today offhandedly broke big news that Lionsgate hoped to deliver four movies out of Suzanne Collins' ridiculously popular dystopian trilogy The Hunger Games. The move, as revealed by some Lionsgate execs in a conference call with Wall Street analysts, would follow the recent trend of splitting the final book in series like Harry Potter and Twilight into two films. But not so fast, number crunchers. Turns out that the plan is not solid yet, as the focus remains on the first film and how it performs next March. (Lionsgate has no comment.)

But even the prospect of four films has the potential to send hardcore fans into an emotional tailspin. On the one hand, this means more of Katniss Everdeen and the rest of her friends and foes on the big screen. (More Jennifer Lawrence, Stanley Tucci, Elizabeth Banks, Woody Harrelson, Donald Sutherland... seriously, this cast!) But the move would also run the risk of offending purists who could bristle at what might be interpreted as the studio making an easy cash grab. Surely they'll take some heart that writer Suzanne Collins continues to assume such an active role in the screenwriting process. The original architect of this whole universe would ostensibly remain at the center of creative decisions, which means the best interests of Katniss' story should remain in good hands.

In the meantime the studio is staying mum on their four films fantasy, let alone where it might split up the action. So fans will have to debate in a vacuum about which book might be lopped in two. With the requisite SPOILER ALERT! flashing red and making siren noises in everyone's mind, allow me to make my own humble suggestion: Leave the relatively slimmer third book, Mockingjay, alone. Instead dig deep into meaty Book 2, Catching Fire. I always thought Collins cut the scene in the hunting cabin with Bonnie and Twill, the runaways from District 8 who spoke of revolution, a little short. There's more tense fun to be had with them and their revelations. Perhaps a natural gut punch of an end to a second movie could follow Snow soonafter dropping his bomb on Katniss that he's tossing her back in the arena. Boom! Jennifer Lawrence herself said this was her favorite scene of the entire trilogy, and the one she could not wait to bring to life.

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