Let The Games Begin

The Hunger Games: On Stage producer Tristan Baker brings Panem to the theatre

- MATT MAYTUM

THE HUNGER GAMES has joined the likes of Back To The Future, My Neighbour Totoro and Stranger Things as the latest screen property to get a blockbuster adaptation on the London stage. Are the odds in its favour? Producer Tristan Baker certainly thinks so.

Paying, ahem, tribute to both Suzanne Collins's original YA dystopian novel and the hit 2012 Lionsgate film it inspired, The Hunger Games: On Stage is wildly ambitious, requiring a purpose-built space in London's Canary Wharf. Having co-founded both production company Runaway Entertainment and Troubadour Theatres and Film Studios (which builds theatre and film event spaces such as Troubadour Wembley Park Theatre, home to Starlight Express), Baker seems uniquely positioned to bring The Hunger Games: On Stage to life.

It all began with Baker speaking to Lionsgate seven years ago. “They were saying, ‘Look, we think The Hunger Games could make a great stage event. It could be a fantastic story to tell in a theatrical sense,” he tells Red Alert. He began assembling a team of previous collaborators, including writer Conor McPherson (Bob Dylan jukebox musical Girl From The North Country) and director Matthew Dunster (2:22 A Ghost Story). Among the other notable talent involved are set designer Miriam Buether (Stranger Things: The First Shadow) and illusion designer Chris Fisher (Harry Potter And The Cursed Child).