Peeta Mellark is headed to the DC Universe. DC Studios co-CEO Peter Safran revealed in an interview with IGN that Josh Hutcherson will voice the escape artist Mister Miracle in a new animated series for HBO Max, TheWrap reported.
Mackenzie Davis will co-star as Big Barda, a super-strong warrior who defected from the villain Darkseid’s Female Furies and became Mister Miracle’s wife and closest ally. In a detail comics readers will appreciate, Davis is taller than Hutcherson, just as Barda towers over Scott Free on the page.
Created by legendary comics artist Jack Kirby in 1971, Scott Free is the son of Highfather, the ruler of the paradise world New Genesis. As a baby he was handed over to Darkseid, the tyrant of the nightmare world Apokolips, as part of a pact to end the war between their planets. Scott grew up in an orphanage built to break its children’s spirits, and instead became the greatest escape artist alive, the first person ever to break free of Apokolips and build a life on Earth.
The series adapts writer Tom King and artist Mitch Gerads’ 12-issue Mister Miracle comic, an award-winning run that used Scott’s impossible escapes to tell a story about trauma and survival. King wrote all eight episodes of the animated series himself and serves as showrunner, arriving at the project fresh from co-creating DC’s Lanterns.
Hutcherson played Peeta Mellark across all four of the original Hunger Games films, and the casting arrives just as that franchise returns to theaters: The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping opens November 20, telling the story of Haymitch Abernathy’s games decades before Peeta’s. Hutcherson has also headlined the Five Nights at Freddy’s films, most recently Five Nights at Freddy’s 2.
DC Studios has not announced a premiere date for Mister Miracle. Whether Hutcherson and Davis would also play Scott and Barda in live action is unconfirmed, though Safran’s fellow co-CEO James Gunn has said the plan for the DC Universe is for its lead actors to carry their characters across animation and live action alike.