Wes Bentley Cast as Seneca Crane in ‘The Hunger Games’

Wes Bentley, perhaps best known as stoner filmmaker Ricky Fitts in 1999′s American Beauty, has been tapped to play Seneca Crane, the Head Gamemaker in The Hunger Games. Though they engineer the look and fake weather of the Arena, the Gamemakers are portrayed as less cruel than simply indifferent to the fates of the tributes they sabotage during the Games. I had always envisioned Crane as an older, tired man, but actually the idea of a thirtysomething Gamemaker fits into the motif of the Capitol and its residents as forever youthful beauties.

Since American Beauty, Bentley has appeared in supernatural movies like Ghost Rider and Jonah Hex, yet his latest project There Be Dragons (out tomorrow) actually has nothing to do with dragons and instead deals with the Spanish Civil War and canonization.

In the first Hunger Games book, Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) has a memorable encounter with the whole group of Gamemakers, when she’s supposed to show off the one talent that will ensure her survival in the Games. Let’s just say, she impresses them.