It’s been a good year or two for tough girls on film. We had Jennifer Lawrence in Winter’s Bone and Hailee Steinfeld in True Grit , both of whom were feted at this weekend’s Oscars. Chloë Moretz redeemed herself for appearing in the deplorable ( 500) Days of Summe r with her scene-stealing role as Hit-Girl in Kick-Ass. And in a few weeks we’ll see the debut of Sucker Punch , Zack Snyder’s action-fantasy about five female teens who escape from an insane asylum.
But the most hotly anticipated bad-ass lass has got to be Katniss Everdeen. She’s the heroine of
The Hunger Games
, Suzanne Collins’ mega-selling YA series that’s set to make its screen debut in 2012. (
Slate
‘s David Plotz, Emily Bazelon, and I
discussed the series
last summer.) Now it seems the casting drama for that film is heating up: EW.com
reported yesterday
that 30 actresses have “met or read for the role,” including Lawrence, Steinfeld, and Moretz. Other contenders include Abigail Breslin, Saoirse Ronan,
Sucker Punch
star Emily Browning, and Lyndsy Fonseca (currently on
Nikita
but probably better known to
longtime Brow Beat readers
as Ted’s daughter on
How I Met Your Mother
).
Variety
noted the day before
that Lawrence has “generated the most interest” at Lionsgate, which on one hand makes me happy. Ree Dolly, her character in
Winter’s Bone
, has the same grit, hardscrabble past, and allergy to cuteness that Katniss does. I’d be thrilled to watch her. But on the other hand, I’m sad that,
as the
Wall Street Journal
reported
and Vulture
highlighted
, the casting breakdowns are specifically looking for a Caucasian actress. (They’re not even using the weaselly ”
Caucasian or any other ethnicity
” formulation.) I was one of the many fans who hoped that the books’ description of Katniss’s “straight black hair” and “olive skin” might open the doors for a non-white actress
—
a move that would have gone a long way toward appeasing those aggrieved parties who recently slapped would-be blockbusters
The Last Airbend
er and
Prince of Persia
with
charges of whitewashing
.
The Hunger Games are a major, missed opportunity for more diverse casting. Like the Harry Potter films before them, this franchise has a massive, built-in audience. As long as the performers are good and the directing is solid — and hell, maybe even if they aren’t — viewers will buy tickets in droves. I’m sure that, as in Airbender , many of the smaller, supporting roles will be cast with ethnic actors. Hunger Games will have its Cho Changs and Padma and Parvati Patils scampering about the margins of its deadly, Hieronymous Bosch -like arenas. But would it be too much to ask for a Katniss in color?
Photograph of Jennifer Lawrence by Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images.
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