Stephen King dissappointed to learn of Hunger Games plagiarism.

It doesn't share that much with Stephen King's "The Running Man". That's like saying that every murder mystery is a rip off of "Stand By Me" because it contains a dead body, or that "The Ghost Whisperer" was a copy of "The Dead Zone".

Frankly Stephen King has written a lot of dreck, and futuristic dystopian societies in which horrible things are on television are an idea that's in the public domain. Any one of us can write our own book series using the same basic set up. Whether it sells or not is entirely based on whether anyone likes what we write. Personally I think "The Hunger Games" was a very good book, and although I don't entirely agree with where the entire series went, it had a very good ending and I immediately went back to book 1 and read the entire thing again. The only Stephen King book I've ever felt interested in reading a second time was his autobiographical book about how to write.

The more interesting question is whether "The Hunger Games" is close to the Japanese "Battle Royale", which I haven't seen, but a couple of film expert friends who've seen both, and saw "Battle Royale" multiple times, say they're different enough, and that's good enough for me.

Am watching "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire" right now and think it's a much better film than the first one, but some of the casting is off. Josh Hutcherson, Stanley Tucci and Jena Malone are just awful and have no business being in the same film as Jennifer Lawrence, Donald Sutherland and Philip Seymour Hoffman. I hadn't thought much of Sam Claflin's casting as Finnick but he's holding his end up. This director is so much better than the first one.

How does Jena Malone get so much work? She's terrible.