What do we know about the casting of Finnick Odair in "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire"? That none of the names mentioned or rumored so far have panned out. Robert Pattinson was the first to to kibosh rumors about his potential involvement, while Taylor Kitsch followed suit not long after. And it seems none of the names, including Armie Hammer and Garrett Hedlund, are in contention at this point.
'Catching Fire' producer Nina Jacobsen has revealed to 24 Frames that the rumors about Hammer and Hedlund are "so not true" and moreover, they're not even at the stage of thinking about who should play the part. “That’s the thing that’s crazy — people are like way ahead of where we are,” she said. “We’ve not narrowed things down by any means. It’s funny to see how things can take on a life of their own.”
She adds that the struggle right now is to figure out whether to listen to fan suggestions or go out on a limb and pick somebody that the studio likes instead. "You have to just sort of act like you’re sitting in a room and you want to just pick the person who gives the best audition and looks and feels most like the part,” she said.
Taking in over $640 million worldwide, that gives Lionsgate six hundred forty million reasons to make sure they do this right as expectations are now sky high for the next installment. With filming gearing up start in late summer or early fall, we presume a decision will be made soon (and we don't exactly buy that they don't have some kind of list of names they're interested in) or perhaps at Comic-Con. Whoever it is, we'll see the result when the Francis Lawrence-directed film opens on November 22, 2013.