The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, the second film of The Hunger Games trilogy, the young adult science-fiction adventure novels by Suzanne Collins, finds Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark being forced to participate in the 75th Annual Hunger Games (The Quarter Quell), a special game that reunites previous winners from all the Districts in one game.

The film took cast and crew into previously unexplored emotional and technical territory, where the filmmakers saw an exciting opportunity to push the storytelling, and characters. “This movie opened up a lot of new opportunities for us because we spent so much more time in the Capitol and we have an arena which is itself the opponent as opposed to the characters being each other’s opponents,” said producer Nina Jacobson on a recent press conference. “I think the heart of these movies is Katniss’ point of view,” she said. Jacobson added, “and as long as you remain firmly in her shoes that will always give you the consistency throughout because, as a character, she is a complex character, she changes but she sort of grounds us throughout the series.”

To make sure he maintained the visual continuity that has been started by Gary Ross in the first film, director Francis Lawrence, who will also be directing the two films to follow Catching Fire, surrounded himself with a creative team he knew would help him bring the design to the next level. “I wanted to make sure that there was still an aesthetic unity to all the movies. I thought Gary [Ross] did an amazing job with the world building in The Hunger Games, so we worked with the same production designer to make sure that the Capitol still was built from the same architecture, that District 12 still had the same almost 1930’s Appalachian feel,” he explained. “We are going to do the same with Mockingjay,” Lawrence added.

Millions of readers await the arrival of this film, although some may think that the media frenzy surrounding it is exactly what the book criticizes in the first place, and that the social commentary gets lost. For Jennifer Lawrence, who brings Katniss to life, these novels have helped shape the political views of young readers. “I think it’s a wonderful message to show just how powerful one voice can be. It’s very easy, as a society, for us to kind of just follow the feet in front of us, and history does kind of repeat itself. I think that it’s an important message for our younger generation to see how important they are in shaping our society and our future,” she said.

These sentiments shared by her co-star Josh Hutcherson, who plays Peeta, were echoed to the press. “I think that, today, with our generation, and my younger brother’s kind of younger generation, coming up too, they are surrounded by so much in-your-face truth from around the world, like about issues that are happening and what not.  They are also told all the time about how they’re supposed to be by the media.  And how they’re... what kind of people they need to be or how they need to look or dress.  And I think this movie shows you that you can go against the flow of things,” he added.

Donald Sutherland, President Snow, was attracted to this project by the political allegory it depicts. “It was essential, for me personally, that I somehow find my way to become a part of this because it more clearly represents the dangers of an oligarchy of the privileged than anything I have seen for a long, long time,” he explained.

Lawrence is very grateful for the role that kicked her career into over-drive, “if I was going to be identified as a character for the rest of my life, that is a hard thing to think about.  But I love this character and I’m proud of her.  I would be proud to be associated with this movie and this character for the rest of my life.”

Familiar faces from the first installment, like Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson, Elizabeth Banks, Stanley Tucci and Lenni Kravitz, are joined by new cast members Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jeffrey Wright, Sam Claflin and Jena Malone, amongst others.

Are you ready to step into the arena?

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire opens in theaters on November 22.