"The Hunger Games" is filling up.
Stanley Tucci has signed on to play Caesar Flickerman in Lionsgate's franchise, based 
on Suzanne Collins' bestselling novels, Lionsgate announced Monday.
"The Hunger Games” is set in, as young adult novels tend to be, a dystopic world. In this one, teenagers are forced to participate in an annually televized fight-to-the-death events. Flickerman is the relentlessly upbeat host of the games.
Tucci appears in Marvel's "Captain America: The First Avenger" and Warner Bros. "Jack the Giant Killer."
Lionsgate plans to release the film on March 23, 2012.
Gary Ross ("Seabiscuit") will direct, and Nina Jacobson’s Color Force will produce with producer Jon Kilik. Billy Ray ("Shattered Glass," "State of Play") wrote the screenplay.
It's a big project, and Lionsgate is hoping it'll deliver audiences the way "The Twilight Saga" delivered for Summit Entertainment.
Last week, Lionsgate announced that Wes Bentley, who starred in the 1999 "American Beauty," had joined the cast. Already, Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson Liam Hemsworth and Elizabeth Banks star.
Tucci is repped by CAA and Anonymous Content.
