Josh Hutcherson originally said “f*ck that” to the thought of returning to #TheHungerGames, but not anymore: “I would love to be back on set with Francis, Jen, with Liam, with Woody. It would not take any convincing at all. I’d be there in a heartbeat.
Haymitch, Peeta and Katniss appear in the epilogue of “The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping.” So is Hutcherson Appearing in the movie? “That would be a dream come true,” he said. “Do dreams come true? Sometimes. Sometimes not. Sometimes, yeah”

Josh Hutcherson was trying get the hell out of Los Angeles. For the better part of a decade, the “Hunger Games” star and his girlfriend, Spanish actor Claudia Traisac, had split their time between L.A. and Madrid, but the eight-hour time difference between the cities had grown wearying. So Hutcherson leased an apartment in Brooklyn, and in April of this year, the couple flew into New York City from Spain, eager to launch their new East Coast life — until, in the car from JFK, Hutcherson got a call from his agent.

“‘How do you feel about going back to the airport right now?’” Hutcherson recalls his agent asking. “I was like, ‘I don’t fucking feel good about it, not at all! Why?’”

The agent explained that Rachel Sennott, the buzzy star of indie hits “Bottoms” and “Shiva Baby,” was launching her first comedy series with HBO, and she wanted Hutcherson to play her character’s boyfriend. But it was going to start shooting in roughly two weeks, and the show’s eventual title doubled as its location: “I Love L.A.”

It was the phone call that Hutcherson had spent years waiting to get. He’d been acting since he was 9; he’d landed his first starring role at 13, in “Zathura: A Space Adventure”; he had a key supporting role in 2010 best picture nominee “The Kids Are All Right” at 16; and when he was 18, he was catapulted into global superstardom when he was cast as Peeta Mellark in “The Hunger Games.” But as Hutcherson drifted toward 30, the roles started to dry up.

“I went through a few years where it was kind of slim pickings, and I wasn’t doing much,” he says quietly, swirling his coffee cup outside a bistro in L.A.’s Echo Park neighborhood. “A lot of young actors don’t make the transition, or the industry kicks them out. I was kind of like, is this the time where I’m over it and done?”

Instead, at 33, Hutcherson is entering a new career peak. On Dec. 5, he’ll star in Blumhouse’s “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2,” adapted from the feverishly popular video game franchise — the first “Freddy’s” movie was an unexpected hit in 2023, grossing $292 million worldwide. And after scrambling to get out of his NYC lease, he did indeed join the cast of “I Love L.A.,” an experience that “reignited such a love and appreciation for this job in me,” he says. “I’ve always wanted to do an HBO comedy on Sunday night. That, to me, is a dream come true.”

Rachel Sennott and Josh Hutcherson in “I Love L.A.”Kenny Laubbacher/HBO

On “I Love L.A.” — which premiered on Nov. 2, runs through Dec. 21 and was just renewed for a second season — Hutcherson plays Dylan, a schoolteacher who loves his live-in girlfriend Maia (Sennott), despite the chaos that her ambition to become a talent manager brings into his life.

“I grew up watching him in ‘Bridge to Terabithia’ and ‘The Hunger Games,’ and there’s something about him, how warm and lovely he is,” Sennott told Variety in October. “I was so impressed by his comedic and improv chops. But also, for audiences, I think you see him and you feel like he’s your boyfriend a little.”

Hutcherson smiles when I tell him Sennott’s reasoning for casting him. “I am known as the good-hearted golden boy, which I’m not mad about,” he says. He has tried to break free of that perception, most recently by playing the toxic tech bro villain in the 2024 Jason Statham action film “The Beekeeper.” But with “I Love L.A.,” Hutcherson says he was “happy to lean into” his Good Guy persona. “If it got me on set and shooting this with Rachel — it’s meant to be.”

Part of the appeal were the days during the eight-week shoot when Hutcherson literally walked to work. “The first script mentioned Erewhon and Tenants of the Trees and the reservoir,” he says, ticking off landmarks of L.A.’s Eastside. “That’s my circuit. That’s where I’ve been haunting for years.”

He also felt at home as the only character on the show who isn’t obsessed with breaking into show business. “Even though I’ve been doing this since I was 9, and I’m so wildly in this industry, I don’t feel like I am in so many ways,” he says. “I don’t go to events unless I need to be there. I’m not active on social media unless the studio is like, we need you to be. I’ve always been one foot in, one foot out. When I started, I didn’t have a hunger for becoming famous; I just wanted to make movies and TV shows. I feel like that aligns with Dylan. He just wants to exist and do something he cares about.”

The chance to play an everyday adult living in the world as it exists in 2025 is rare for any actor right now, and Hutcherson does not take it for granted. “I’ve grown up working with tennis balls and green screens,” he says. “I don’t have to try to convince the audience that we’re, like, X amount of years in the future in a dystopic society or that these animatronics are possessed by ghost children.”

Universal/Courtesy Everett Collection

He’s referring, of course, to the “Freddy’s” movies, which revolve around a creepy, long-shuttered pizzeria joint à la Chuck E. Cheese and its homicidal robot animal mascots that are embodied by the spirits of murdered kids. The elaborate animatronic costumes created by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop can be worn by the performers only for 30 minutes at a time before the weight and heat become overwhelming. And when they do have the costumes on, there’s no guarantee they’re going to work right.

“The stunt actor has to turn and look to the right, but then three people with remote controls have to make the eyes time with the blink,” Hutcherson says. “You’ll do 10 takes, because the animatronic movement isn’t quite working. That one take that the animatronic is perfect, you better be perfect too, because that’s the one that’s going in the movie.”

The sequel, Hutcherson estimates, has “more than double” the creatures from the first film, one of which, the character called Mangle, requires “a team of 10 or 12 people to operate.”

“And the animatronics might find a way to leave the pizzeria,” he adds, “which is a big deal.”

But wait, I say, didn’t the titular Freddy exit the pizzeria in the first movie?

“Yes, but there’s, like, certain rules of the game that —” he says, his voice slowing down and raising in pitch with each successive word. “It’s murky. And I don’t fully get it, but I know it’s a big deal that the animatronics that leave, leave. It’s a whole thing.”

When Hutcherson signed on to the first “Freddy’s,” he didn’t really grasp the size of the “absolutely rabid fan base” for the mid-2010s video games that inspired the films “until after the movie came out.” But as he talks about shooting the sequel — directed once again by Emma Tammi, and written by the game’s creator, Scott Cawthon — I get the feeling that Hutcherson is still simply along for the ride.

Josh Hutcherson and director Emma Tammi on the set of “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2”Ryan Green / Universal Pictures / Courtesy Everett Collection

“The main focus is making something that the FNAF fandom will go crazy for,” he says, pronouncing the acronym as the fans do: “fuh-naff.” “Sometimes I’m like, ‘This doesn’t make any sense! How can I possibly do this?’ And they’re like, ‘It’s from the game.’” He starts laughing as he puts up his hands in surrender. “‘All right, all right, all right, I’m on board, I’m on board.’ But it’s crazy.”

Satisfying the exacting expectations of a vocal fanbase is certainly familiar territory for Hutcherson, after spending half a decade with Jennifer Lawrence and Liam Hemsworth inside the “Hunger Games” maelstrom. As his time with that franchise was coming to an end with 2015’s “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2,” Hutcherson says he went through a phase where he wanted absolutely nothing to do with it. “I was like, ‘Fuck that,’” he says matter-of-factly. “I got thrust into a place of notoriety that I never dreamed of, never wanted. It took privacy from me.”

To this day, Hutcherson avoids crowded public places, including in Madrid, and strangers yelling “Peeta” at him is a daily occurrence. But he’s grown to appreciate everything that “The Hunger Games” has provided him, so much so that his face lights up when I bring up the prospect of making another film with the core team, including director Francis Lawrence and co-star Woody Harrelson. “I would love to be back on set with Francis, with Jen, with Liam, with Woody,” he says. “It would not take any convincing at all. I’d be there in a heartbeat.”

There’s a chance that could happen sooner than one may expect. Francis Lawrence is in production on an adaptation of Suzanne Collins’ prequel novel “Sunrise on the Reaping,” which chronicles the Hunger Games experience from the perspective of Harrelson’s character Haymitch Abernathy when he was 16 — and ends with an epilogue set after the events of “Mockingjay,” featuring Haymitch, Peeta and series heroine Katniss Everdeen.

Hutcherson learned of that coda only as the book hit shelves in March. So, I ask, is he in the new movie?

He breaks into a massive grin. “That would be a dream come true,” he says, holding my gaze.

I’m not quite sure what you’re trying to communicate to me, I say.

“It would be a dream come true,” he repeats. “Do dreams come true? Sometimes. Sometimes not. Sometimes, yeah.”

Selome Hailu contributed to this story.