Deb Zane, our casting director on the Hunger Games was very sanguine, from the beginning, about just blocking out what everybody else says that they want.

If the movie [The Hunger Games] were stylized violence that was pretty and fun and cool, which is great when you go see 300 or The Matrix, it would just be out of sync with the fact that they're kids.

I'm an ardent fan. All I really had to do was put myself in my own shoes.

I am very filmmaker oriented, as a producer. I think the most important thing is that you have to really choose the players carefully.

I can't imagine Hunger Games, even with its very popular books, being nearly a success that it's been without Jen Lawrence being the perfect person to play that role - a very modern celebrity, a very down-to-earth, accessible, celebrity.

There is a young fella who works for me, named Brian Unkeless, who's very smart. We're a very small company that has been Brian and me and two assistants, although we're growing a little bit now. He read the [The Hunger Games] book and loved it, and told me I should read it. He had been a fan of the Gregor books. So, I read it and couldn't put it down and couldn't stop thinking about it. I really became obsessed with the thought of producing it, and was completely bothered by the idea that anybody but me could produce it.

Deb Zane, our casting director on the Hunger Games was very sanguine, from the beginning, about just blocking out what everybody else says that they want.