AI Reveals What The Hunger Games Characters Should Look Like According To The Books

Adapting a book to the big screen is tough — and inevitably, fans of the source material will get mad when the characters they loved so much on the page don't look exactly the way they imagined. This is probably why some fans have created their own versions of what characters from popular series like "The Hunger Games" should look like according to the way they were described in the original books by Suzanne Collins.

That's how we got this AI-rendered reimagining of "The Hunger Games" by the YouTube account Screen AI, which puts up images of the characters onscreen next to images of what they're supposed to look like, based on Collins' physical descriptions. This includes the fact that in the books, Katniss Everdeen is described as a small, slight, and frankly malnourished girl with dark hair and olive-hued skin; in the films, she's played by Jennifer Lawrence, who's quite tall and definitely on the paler side. Each main character gets this treatment, including Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson), Gale Hawthorne (Liam Hemsworth), President Coriolanus Snow (the late Donald Sutherland), Haymitch Abernathy (Woody Harrelson), and more — and for what it's worth, the closest matches appear to be Snow, Finnick Odair (Sam Claflin), and Katniss' younger sister Primrose Everdeen (Willow Shields).

Despite the fact that not every single "Hunger Games" actor looks exactly as they're described in Suzanne Collins' novels, nobody can deny that the creative team behind the film adaptation assembled a veritable murderer's row of phenomenal actors to play those roles. (Thanks to the main throughline of the story, where innocent children kill each other for the entertainment of the ruling class, some of them are, in the narrative, literal murderers.) Jennifer Lawrence won her Oscar for "Silver Linings Playbook" during the run of the original four "Hunger Games" movies, giving her serious legitimacy while playing Katniss, and Hollywood veterans and like Woody Harrelson, Elizabeth Banks, and Donald Sutherland lend more credibility to the project. 

In sequels "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire" and both parts of "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay," outright legends like Jeffrey Wright, Amanda Plummer, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Julianne Moore join the sprawling cast as well alongside younger standouts like Jena Malone, Sam Claflin, and Natalie Dormer, just to name a few. Even "The Boys" star Jack Quaid manages to make an appearance in the first film, though it's pretty brief. Not every film adaptation will get each character's look exactly right, but the "Hunger Games" films brought in powerhouse performers, at the very least.

Fans of "The Hunger Games" likely thought the franchise officially concluded in 2015 with "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 2," but Suzanne Collins surprised just about everybody in 2020 when she released "The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes." The novel, which was adapted into a film in 2023, goes back to the 10th annual Hunger Games — the original books start with the 74th Hunger Games and spotlight the 75th in "Catching Fire" — and focuses on a young Coriolanus Snow, played by Tom Blyth in Francis Lawrence's movie. When Coriolanus gets involved in planning the 10th Games, he's instructed to mentor the "tribute" from District 12, Lucy Gray Baird (Racel Zegler), who isn't much of a fighter but whose musical talents earn affection and sympathy from the crowds watching ... and the relationship between the two gets complicated.

There's another prequel coming soon too — in March of 2025, Collins will release "Sunrise on the Reaping," an account of the 50th Hunger Games that were won by a young Haymitch Abernathy. (As of this writing, a young Haymitch hasn't been cast just yet, but names like Tom Glynn-Carney and Mike Faist have been making the rounds). The book has already been optioned by Lionsgate, which plans to release an adaptation in November 2026. We'll have wait and to see if anyone uses AI to figure out if young Haymitch looks exactly right.