Alex Pettyfer set to ruin...er, in the running for The Hunger Games lead role

Ahhh, Alex Pettyfer. All haircut and abdominals. The actor/model...or better yet, model/actor has been pushed to the stratosphere lately. Although each of those attempts has landed with a gasp and a wimper, somebody out there clearly loves the English-borne star of such duds as Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker, I Am Number Four, and most recently Beastly.  Beastly in particular hurts because it actually had promise at one point, but somewhere along the line CBS Films realized what they actually had and clamped down on the marketing budget. 

That hasn't stopped Pettyfer from lining up future projects. He's already got the sci-fi thriller, Now, alongside Amanda Seyfried and Justin Timberlake. There's a biopic of race car driver James Hunt which he's already agreed to, not to mention he's up for the lead role in The Bourne Legacy(nooooo!!!!), The Last Apprentice alongside Jeff Bridges and Jennifer Lawrence, and possibly even City of Bones, based on Cassandra Clare's Mortal Instruments series. If it's a youth skewing adaptation, his name is attached somewhere.

Those films are big, but the biggest by far is The Hunger Games, which has seen every young actress under the sun vying for the lead role of Katniss Everdeen. Based on Suzanne Collins' trilogy of novels, the story is basically about a future dystopian society where one boy and one girl from each community is chosen to fight to the death in a televised competition. While the Katniss role has received a ton of attention, there is another lead role yet to be cast, that of her love interest, Peeta Mellark.  In a brief conversation with Access Hollywood, Pettyfer admitted that he'd been contacted about the role, but won't decide until he sees a script. 

No other names for the role have really been kicked around as of yet, but that'll probably change very soon. Right now the lead contenders for the Katniss role appear to be Hailee Steinfeld(True Grit), and Jennifer Lawrence(The Burning Plain). The Hunger Games already has a release date set of March 23rd, 2012!