It’s time to return to the Games.
First up: 2008’sThe Hunger Games.
“We loved her writing and loved what she had done with those books,” Levithan tells EW.
Credit: Scholastic
Then she sent in the proposal, and it just blew us away."
The Hunger Gameswas unlike anything Levithan and his colleagues had been expecting.
“It certainly was much more intense than we had been expecting.
So the idea of her doing something older and having such high stakes made perfect sense to us.”
But other than one of his colleagues, he was the only one in on the secret.
“It was just to a degree that very few, if any, manuscripts have blown us away.
We were evangelical in our beliefs for it.”
Still, they knew there was no guarantee the book would resonate with readers.
“We were thinking in book terms,” Levithan says.
“It genuinely affected the way that people see the world and politics and power.
Its astonishing when you’re free to see a book or story be that powerful.
And the story continued in movies, which only enhanced the power.
But Levithan and his colleagues weren’t worried about the backlash.
“We were never concerned about people’s reaction once they read the book,” he says.
You have to think of it as a war novel.
So people saying, ‘Oh goodness, 16-year-olds killing each other!’
And more times than not, people would immediately understand what Suzanne was doing.”
She stayed within those parameters herself, because that’s the point of the book."
“That is the biggest flashpoint in the first book.”
“Haymitch, I love Haymitch!”
“Heshouldbe a trope.
He’s the master, he should be like Obi-Wan, right?
And what [Collins] did with that trope is just so completely inventive.
Levithan was surprised to see how people didn’t only connect with Katniss.
But he was gratified to see that “the only unifying thing was that they all loved Katniss.
That does keep you tuning in, if that is the aspect that you are tuning in for.”
Stay tuned for EW’s next binge-read retrospective as Levithan looks back on 2009’sCatching Fire.
