The star of The Hunger Games franchise, Josh Hutcherson, makes a shocking revelation about his career after he played Peeta Mellark for years. The 33-year-old actor shot into stardom when the young adult action series became very successful, but apparently, this didn’t necessarily benefit Hutcherson. As he says, after The Hunger Games, all he faced was “disappointment, failure, rejection.”
Hutcherson is going through a much-deserved comeback with roles in films like Five Nights at Freddy’s and The Beekeeper. He has also moved into television for the HBO comedy I Love LA. The actor recently appeared on the podcast Dinner’s on Me with Jesse Tyler Ferguson, and talked about his career highs and lows, as well as his recent appearance on Five Nights at Freddy’s 2.
The Hunger Games series is a major part of his life, as it “set things up” for him: “I didn’t learn rejection ever. I just knew only success, from the age nine till, like, 24, then kind of post-Hunger Games world. Also, The Hunger Games set things up.” Hutcherson says that the action franchise marked the peak of his career, starring alongside major Hollywood stars:
“The industry is so goddamn tricky, because they set you up in this way, where they’re like, ‘You’ve arrived. You now are working with Jennifer Lawrence and Philip Seymour Hoffman, and you’re in this movie that makes billions of dollars. You’re the second lead of the film. What do you want? The kingdom is yours.’ And it’s not, at all.”
But as big as the blockbuster series became, after it ended, Hutcherson found himself facing rejection after rejection. He says that starting his career so young gave him a wrong perspective about the industry – one in which he wasn’t automatically cast after every audition:
“As quickly as they’re excited to get you into that spotlight, they want to not give you anything else in a way. It’s very complicated. So I tasted my kind of first feeling of disappointment, failure, rejection, when I was 24 or so, 25.
“It was just like a string of no one calling, not getting any offers, auditioning, but not getting cast. It’s this whole thing of, ‘Oh wow, I have my career that I’ve had since I was nine years old. It’s always worked. I always got cast.’ Of course, there are things that you don’t get cast in, but I had only known that the chances are, if I was auditioning, I was going to book it. That is just not the reality at all… That was a wild, very brutal lesson.”
Will Josh Hutcherson Return in the New ‘Hunger Games’ Movie?
The following has spoilers for The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping.Hutcherson appeared as Peeta Mellark in four Hunger Games films, from 2012 to 2015. Katniss’ other half in the franchise, Peeta, is one of the most important tributes, and with time he became a fan-favorite character. Naturally, as the series goes on with the prequels The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes and Sunrise on the Reaping, everyone wonders whether Hutcherson could reprise his character from the young adult dystopian franchise.
Considering the prequels take place decades before the original 2012 adaptation, it wouldn’t be logical for Hutcherson to appear in this part of the timeline. The upcoming feature The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping is set to land in theaters in November 2026, and though Peeta does show up in the book’s epilogue, it’s still a mystery whether Josh Hutcherson could return in the film adaptation. It remains to be seen whether he will return for the highly anticipated prequel.
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