Josh Hutcherson on FNAF and Hunger Games sequels, Beekeeper and that viral Whistle meme

Josh Hutcherson says his crazy tech bro in The Beekeeper was an attempt to get away from the dystopian action franchise that made him famous, but he’d reunite his co-stars in a heartbeat.

Josh Hutcherson admits to being a little freaked out and “triggered” when he started to see Hunger Games posters popping up everywhere last year.

It’s now been a decade since he last played the stout-hearted and kindly Peeta Mellark in the hugely successful dystopian action movies, but seeing the promotional material for last year’s Hunger Games prequel, The Ballad Of Songbirds and Snakes, took him right back to the madness that made him and co-stars Jennifer Lawrence and Aussie Liam Hemsworth household names.

The four hit films have been a big part of the former child star’s life ever since he was cast in 2011 but he says he’s definitely seen a “big uptick” in interest since the new film came out.

“I still haven’t seen it yet, and I really want to,” Hutcherson says over Zoom call from New York, where he is promoting his new action-thriller, The Beekeeper.

“But it’s cool. For me, the weird experience was driving down the street and seeing a Hunger Games billboard and thinking ‘Oh shit, did I miss a junket? Am I supposed to be doing something right now?’.

“It’s triggering of, like, ‘I should be doing things’. I’m just really happy to see that it has another life and people are coming back to the original movies as well.”

For the record, Hutcherson, who is still close to his cast mates, says should anyone decide to reunite Peeta, Katniss and Gale for another Hunger Games project, he’s all in.

“Absolutely,” he says. “Those four years making those movies were some of the best of my career and the most fun. If they got the gang back together, like a reunion, I’m in 100 per cent.”

Josh Hutcherson stars as Derek Danforth in The Beekeeper.

Being an integral part of a pop culture phenomenon like the Hunger Games doesn’t come without its baggage and for years Hutcherson found it difficult to distance himself from the fundamentally decent Peeta, who was so beloved by audiences. It’s one of the reasons that he jumped at the chance to play an “absolutely unhinged” human being in his new movie, The Beekeeper, starring the hard-hitting, soft-talking action stalwart, Jason Statham.

His character, Derek Danforth, is a spoiled, entitled, drug-addled tech bro, who sports frosted tips and appalling fashion sense and runs a company that swindles the elderly and vulnerable of their life savings in phishing scams for sport and money. Coincidentally, Hutcherson had elderly relatives who had been conned in a similar matter, adding a little spice to the revenge tale – even if his character is the one destined to get his comeuppance at the hands of Statham’s rogue, lethal-weapon agent.

“I have always yearned for the opportunity to place somebody at despicable as Derek,” Hutcherson says with a laugh. I was definitely surprised when they came to me and David (Ayer, the director) thought about me for this guy, but I was thrilled at the opportunity.

“I think that as an actor I have always wanted to try to find opportunities to really stretch other parts of me and really try to fit myself into something that’s very different. I find that playing a character that is that wild and out there and terrible gives you a lot of freedom to really go for it.”

For all of his character’s harnessing of elaborate technology to commit heinous acts of fraud and greed, Hutcherson says he’s “a black hole of technology”.

“If I’m around, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi will stop working,” he laughs. “I think Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are great ideas … but for me they just don’t work and I am convinced that there’s something I have that just either sucks it or blocks it.”

Josh Hutcherson says he would 100 per cent reunite with his Hunger Games stars Liam Hemsworth and Jennifer Lawrence. Picture: Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Hutcherson admits to driving an electric car and playing a few video games, but his social media presence is precisely zero, which is the main reason he was completely baffled by the recent meme that featured a 2014 fan edit containing pictures of him over the years set to the Flo Rida tune Whistle. It went viral on TikTok in November – just as the actor was enjoying a resurgence on-screen and online thanks to the movie adaptation of cult video game Five Nights At Freddy’s (FNAF) – and then started to crop up in the oddest of online places late last year in a similar vein to the Rick Astley “Rickroll” from the late 2000s.

Hutcherson only saw the meme for himself when his younger brother, who works with data and coding, showed it to him over the recent holiday period – and he’s still none the wiser.

“They showed me and I was like ‘what the hell is this? Where does this come from?’,” he says incredulously. “It’s so random, and that’s one of the beautiful and scary things about the internet is something so odd can gain a whole life of its own and become this whole thing.”

But after seeing it appear on the bottom of US President Joe Biden’s coffee cup on a post from the official Democrats Instagram feed, he realised that resistance was futile.

“I was like ‘all right man, cool, I’m here for it’,” he says.

Josh Hutcherson will be back with Bonnie, Freddy Fazbear and Chica in the Five Nights at Freddy's, sequel.

Hutcherson says that the success of the FNAF movie, which raked in $440 million from its $30 million budget, caught everyone involved by surprise. The filmmakers knew that the fans of the video game series featuring murderous animatronic puppets would show up in droves but whether it would cross over into the mainstream was much less certain, particularly given the chequered form of video game adaptations over the years.

“I think it has to do with being loyal to what the game is and the world that the fans want to see and then also just trying to make a fun, enjoyable, intro-to-horror type film,” Hutcherson muses. “That’s really hard to execute, finding that PG-13 that has some scariness, but it’s not too intense. It’s really a tough line to walk and I think that Blumhouse and Universal and Emma Tammi, our writer-director, really struck that balance in quite a nice way. It’s very cool to be a part of that universe.”

And FNAF fans can rejoice in the fact that there’s more of Freddy Fazbear and his killer cronies to come. Hutcherson says he signed on for multiple movies as security guard Mike Schmidt and he hopes to be shooting the sequel later this year.

“They haven’t made anything official yet, but I think they’re trying to break the next story because there’s so many avenues you can take with all the different versions of the games and the worlds and stuff,” he says. “So they are trying to see what that story will look like, but I think they want to try to shoot it this year, hopefully, so we’ll see how that all comes down the pipeline.”

The Beekeeper is in cinemas now. Five Nights At Freddy’s is out now digitally to rent or buy.

Originally published as Josh Hutcherson on FNAF and Hunger Games sequels, Beekeeper and that viral Whistle meme