Josh Hutcherson on Hunger Games Return and Five Nights at Freddys 2

The agent explained that Rachel Sennott, the effervescent star of the indie hits “Bottoms” and “Shiva Baby,” was launching her first comedy series at HBO, and she wanted Hutcherson to play her character’s boyfriend. But filming was set to begin in about two weeks, and the show’s final title doubled as the location: “I Love LA”

It was the call Hutcherson had waited years for. He had been acting since he was nine; he got his first leading role at age 13 in “Zathura: A Space Adventure”; he had a major supporting role in the 2010 nominated film The Kids Are All Right at the age of 16; and at 18, he was catapulted into global superstardom when he was cast as Peeta Mellark in “The Hunger Games.” But as Hutcherson drifted toward his thirties, the roles began to dry up.

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

Instead, at age 33, Hutcherson is entering a new career peak. On December 5, he will star in Blumhouse’s “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2,” an adaptation of the feverishly popular video game franchise. The first “Freddy’s” movie was an unexpected hit in 2023, grossing $292 million worldwide. And after struggling to get out of his lease in New York, he did indeed join the cast of “I Love LA,” an experience that “rekindled such a love and appreciation for this job in me,” he says. “I’ve always wanted to do an HBO comedy on Sunday nights. That’s a dream come true for me.”

In “I Love LA” — which premiered on Nov. 2, runs through Dec. 21 and was just renewed for a second season — Hutcherson plays Dylan, a schoolteacher who adores his live-in girlfriend Maia (Sennott) despite the chaos 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 said Variety in October. “I was so impressed by his comedic and improvisational skills. But also for the audience I think you see him and have the feeling that he your boyfriend a little.”

Hutcherson smiles when I tell him why Sennott cast him. “I’m known as the kind-hearted golden boy, which I’m not mad at,” he says. He has tried to rid himself of that perception, most recently by playing the toxic technology villain in the 2024 Jason Statham action film, “The Beekeeper.” But with “I Love LA,” Hutcherson says he was “happy to lean into his Good Guy persona. “If this allowed me to get on set and film this with Rachel, then that was the intention.”

Part of the appeal was 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 LA’s Eastside. “That’s my circuit. I’ve been haunting it 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 active in this industry, I don’t feel like I am in so many ways,” he says. “I don’t go to events unless I have to be there. I’m not active on social media unless the studio is like that, we need that. I’ve always had one foot in and one foot out. When I started, I wasn’t hungry to be famous; I just wanted to make movies and TV shows. I feel like that ties into Dylan. He just wants to exist and do something he cares about.”

The opportunity to play an everyday adult living in the world as it exists in 2025 is rare for any actor at this point, and Hutcherson doesn’t take that opportunity for granted. “I grew up with tennis balls and green screens,” he says. “I don’t have to try to convince the audience that X number of years in the future we are in a dystopian society or that these animatronics are possessed by ghost children.”

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

“The stunt actor has to turn around and look to the right, but then three people with remote controls have to blink their eyes,” says Hutcherson. “You take ten takes because the animatronic movement doesn’t quite work. That one shot that the animatronic is perfect, you better be perfect because that’s the one that goes into the movie.”

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

“Yes, but there are certain rules that…” he says, his voice slowing and rising in pitch with each successive word. “It’s dark. And I don’t fully understand it, but I know it’s a big deal with the animatronics leaving, leaving. It’s a big deal.”

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

“The main focus is on making something that the FNAF fandom will love,” he says, pronouncing the acronym the way fans do: “fuh-naff.” “Sometimes I think, ‘This doesn’t make sense! How can I possibly do this?’ And they say, ‘It’s from the game.'” He starts laughing as he raises his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay, okay, I’m on board, I’m on board.” But it’s crazy.”

Meeting the demanding expectations of a vocal fanbase is certainly familiar territory for Hutcherson, after spending half a decade with Jennifer Lawrence and Liam Hemsworth in the maelstrom of the “Hunger Games.” When his time with that franchise came to an end with 2015’s “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2,” Hutcherson said he went through a phase where he wanted absolutely nothing to do with it. “I thought, ‘Fuck that,’” he says matter-of-factly. “I was thrust into a place of fame that I never dreamed of, that I never dreamed of. It cost me privacy.”

To this day, Hutcherson avoids crowded public places, including in Madrid, and strangers calling him “Peeta” are a daily occurrence. But he has come to appreciate everything “The Hunger Games” has given 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 doesn’t take any convincing not at all. I would be there in a minute.”

There’s a chance this could happen sooner than you might 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.

Selome Hailu contributed to this story.