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The second stop was The Ellen Show.
The vibe was totally different from The Tonight Show.
Ellen's style was all about pulling out the fun, goofy side of her guests.
With Cassius feeding her little tips between segments, Jennifer started loosening up. She stopped reciting the stiff answers her manager had drilled into her and just let her natural, no-filter personality shine through.
It worked like magic. Viewers loved the real, funny, straight-talking girl on screen and started thinking, Yeah… she actually feels like Katniss.
During the games segment, Ellen ran a lightning-round "Hunger Games trivia" quiz and split them up so they couldn't help each other.
Jennifer crushed every book detail.
Cassius answered with quick, clever twists that were somehow both surprising and totally on point.
Their back-and-forth had the audience cracking up nonstop.
The penalty round was a whipped-cream-pie fight.
Jennifer smashed one straight into Cassius's face. The camera caught his deadpan, defeated head-shake perfectly—pure couple energy.
After the episode aired, #KatnissIsBuilt and #CreamPiePeeta trended for a hot minute and actually softened some of the earlier hate.
A ton of comments rolled in: "These two are hilarious together!"
"Jennifer is adorable. Cassius has the patience of a saint!"
For the next week the two of them were on a nonstop promo grind.
Talk shows of every size, morning, afternoon, late-night—they did them all.
Their schedule was wall-to-wall: makeup room, van, studio, repeat.
It somehow felt just as exhausting as shooting in the forest.
But the high-profile appearances paid off fast.
Clipped segments from the shows started spreading like wildfire across social media.
YouTube views on the clips skyrocketed.
Tumblr fans turned their eye-contact moments, Jennifer's big laughs, and Cassius's long-suffering expressions into GIFs that got shared millions of times.
On Twitter, alongside the lingering hate tags, positive ones started popping up: #JenniferAndCassiusCP and #CantWaitForHungerGames.
A lot of that momentum came from Cassius's core fanbase—his supporters who'd been riding with him since Green Lantern, plus the global Asian audience he'd built.
Seeing him handle mainstream late-night shows with calm confidence and crack jokes with Jennifer lit a fire under them.
They flooded the comment sections in both English and , dropping facts about his previous work, praising his acting, and calmly pushing back on the most toxic book-purist takes.
Lionsgate's PR team watched the numbers shift in real time. Negative stories were dropping. Hashtags with #HungerGames and #Cassius kept climbing.
The extreme hate was still there, but it was getting drowned out by neutral and positive voices.
The official movie Twitter account gained hundreds of thousands of followers in a single week.
"That kid is a goldmine," a senior Lionsgate VP muttered in a strategy meeting. "He doesn't just hold his own—he lifts Jennifer with him. Those show clips are doing more for us than the millions we spent on traditional ads!"
The execs quickly reached a decision: they needed to lock Cassius in tighter and give him real skin in the game.
During a break between tapings, Rob showed up at the Beverly Hills house waving a revised addendum.
"Bro! Big one incoming!"
He slapped the papers on the coffee table, eyes gleaming. "Lionsgate just sent over a new supplemental contract!"
Cassius picked it up and started reading.
Jennifer, sensing this was business, quietly slipped back to her room. She had good boundaries.
The key change was a beefed-up backend deal.
The original contract had given him a modest share of global box office.
The new tiered escalators looked like this:
- Base target: $300 million worldwide → profit share jumps to 5%.
- First incentive: $500 million → profit share jumps to 8%.
- Second incentive: $1 billion → profit share jumps to 10%.
Rob held up two fingers, voice low but buzzing. "Rough math? That could mean more than ten million dollars in your pocket."
Cassius did the mental math.
In his last life, the first Hunger Games had done almost $700 million globally.
With the extra heat he and Jennifer had created, plus their on-screen chemistry blowing up, breaking a billion wasn't impossible.
"Why the sudden generosity from Lionsgate?" he asked.
"They're not stupid," Rob said. "Those talk-show appearances proved you have real star power. They want you fully invested in the publicity push, and this is how they do it. If the movie hits the numbers, they still make a fortune and you get a nice slice. If it doesn't, they pay nothing extra. Win-win for them. Plus it sends a message to Jennifer and the rest of the industry about how serious they are on this project."
Rob glanced at the closed door to Jennifer's room and dropped his voice even lower. "She got a similar addendum, but nowhere near as sweet as yours."
Cassius nodded and signed the pages without hesitation.
For him the risk was basically zero.
A minute later Jennifer's manager called her. She stepped out, gave Cassius a quick thumbs-up, and dashed off to handle her own paperwork.
With the new deal signed, their promo schedule kicked into overdrive.
They were now eating, sleeping, and breathing The Hunger Games.
They had said the same lines so many times they were practically sleep-talking them.
Finally they caught a breather.
The first official trailer for The Hunger Games was about to drop.
Cassius, Jennifer, and Liam (who'd been dragged in by his own manager) gathered in a Lionsgate screening room in LA.
The three of them sat on the floor in front of a massive TV, surrounded by pizza boxes and Coke bottles.
This was the first time any of them had seen the finished trailer.
"My manager told me not to read the comments—said it would mess with my head," Jennifer said, sitting cross-legged on the carpet and grabbing a handful of chips. "Like that's possible."
Liam looked the most relaxed. His role as Gale had way less screen time, so he figured his shots would be short.
Cassius didn't say anything. He just turned the volume up.
The trailer started.
Compared to the version Cassius remembered from his last life, this cut gave Peeta noticeably more screen time. It wasn't all Katniss anymore.
There were extra beats of the two of them together—exactly what Rob had told him the studio wanted after worrying the original cut felt too violent for teen audiences.
The trailer was good.
Even though they'd already seen the rough assembly, the three of them still got sucked in.
When the final title card and release date hit and the music cut to black, the little screening room stayed quiet for a second.
"Damn," Liam said first. "That was tight."
His tone was a little complicated—clearly his own shots were even shorter than he'd hoped.
Jennifer stared at the blank screen, blinking. "I… don't look that old, right?"
Typical actress—first thing she checked was her own face.
But with the makeup, lighting, and high-stakes editing, the wild, fierce energy of Katniss actually overpowered the usual complaints about her age and build.
Cassius stayed quiet, replaying the pacing and information density in his head.
Lionsgate's editors had been smart. They avoided lingering static shots that could fuel the "doesn't match the book" arguments and instead hammered fast action, tense close-ups, and emotional peaks.
Peeta's deep, protective love story had been pulled forward and turned into one of the emotional anchors.
"It's solid," Cassius finally said. "They hit all the right beats and left enough mystery."
They weren't the only ones watching.
The trailer dropped simultaneously across TV networks and every major platform.
Within minutes, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, movie sites, and book forums were flooded.
Servers stuttered under the sudden traffic spike.
The official Hunger Games trailer comments exploded.
"Holy shit! This looks insane—better than I imagined!"
"Jennifer Lawrence is Katniss. That stare, that bow pull—goosebumps!"
"Cassius killed it—holy crap, Peeta's devotion hits different on screen!"
"The action looks so real, I can't wait!"
"Gale looks hot! Even with less screen time, that look back was fire!"
Casual viewers, Cassius and Jennifer's fans, and even some book readers who had been skeptical were instantly hooked.
The casting complaints that had raged for weeks suddenly felt old.
In this moment, a lot of them admitted the actors actually felt right.
Of course a hardcore chunk of book purists still hated it:
"Great, another Hollywood popcorn trailer—pure action and soap-opera romance!"
"Where's Katniss's inner conflict? Her complicated hatred for the Games and the Capitol? All we get is archery and parkour?"
"Peeta's line delivery was so cheesy!"
"They completely missed the point. This looks like a teen adventure love story, not a brutal allegory about consumerism and totalitarianism!"
But for the first time, the positive voices were louder.
The trailer had done exactly what a great trailer is supposed to do—it made people excited to see the movie.