Austin Butler reveals failed audition for key ‘Hunger Games’ character

Austin Butler has revealed that he unsuccessfully auditioned to play Peeta Mellark in The Hunger Games.

• READ MORE: ‘The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes’ review: sings a pleasingly familiar tune

The role ultimately went to Josh Hutcherson, who starred in four Hunger Games movies between 2012 and 2015 opposite Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen and Liam Hemsworth as Gale Hawthorne.

“I auditioned for ‘The Hunger Games’ and I didn’t get it at all,” Butler told Buzzfeed in a recent interview. “I don’t even think I got a call back, what’s the character, Peeta? Josh Hutcherson got that, he’s great.”

Butler was joined in interview by his The Bikeriders co-star Jodie Comer, who revealed she also once missed out on a big big franchise: “I auditioned for ‘Mamma Mia!’ That was a time, That was also when I was auditioning for ‘Killing Eve’ as well,” she said.

Before auditioning for The Hunger Games, Butler was best known for featuring in various Disney Channel and Nickelodeon projects such Zoey 101, iCarly and Sharpay’s Fabulous Adventure. He later went on to star in The CW’s Sex and the City prequel series The Carrie Diaries.

His breakout movie role came 2022’s Elvis, directed by Baz Luhrmann. He then went on to land his first major blockbuster part in Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two, which released in cinemas this March.

As for The Hunger Games, the franchise is set to keep growing following Lionsgate’s announcement that a new prequel movie is in the works, based on Suzanne Collins’ upcoming novel Sunrise on the Reaping.

The book is to be released in 2025, with the the film adaptation arriving in cinemas on November 20, 2026. Francis Lawrence, who has helmed every Hunger Games instalment since 2012’s Catching Fire, is reportedly in talks to direct.

The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping will revisit the world of Panem 24 years before the events of the Hunger Games saga, and four decades after The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, which was recently adapted in a film starring Rachel Zegler, Tom Blyth, Viola Davis and Peter Dinklage.

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