We learned two weeks ago that Lionsgate had hired Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire and 127 Hours screenwriter Simon Beaufoy to write the sequel.  He's currently working under the supervision of Ross, who is in the midst of post-production on The Hunger Games (Ross himself is a four-time Oscar nominee).

Lawrence, who starred in 2010's The Hunger Games (for her first Oscar nomination) and appeared as Mystique in last year's X-Men: First Class, plays Katniss Everdeen, the indomitable heroine who volunteers for the titular survival competition in order to save her younger sister.  Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Lawrence revealed that she beings training for the sequel this summer, saying,

“Signing onto the movies I was like, ‘Well, I’ll probably love the first one and then I’ll just want to get the rest of them out of the way, but I can’t wait to start training. As soon as they were like ‘We need to start training in July,’ I was like ‘Woohoo!’ I can’t wait to get back. Though I don’t know if that’s because I think we might shoot in Hawaii.”

Hawaii would make sense as a location, since the sequel's games involve a man-made beach created by the Capitol government specifically for the tournament.  Lawrence citing the July training start supports the general word that Catching Fire is tentatively scheduled to be in production during the fall in order to meet its November 2013 release date.

We're heading into heavy SPOILER TERRITORY here, but Ross also shared his excitement for the sequel, explaining,

“I love the title Catching Fire because from the moment Katniss was willing to eat the berries, the moment she was willing to give her life for something larger than herself, she set off a chain reaction that was at once bigger than her and also because of her. That’s a very exciting movie to make because you’re seeing the emergence of a leader. It’s the birth of a revolution so it has context that’s larger than just the Games themselves.”

While this first film is centered around the competition, Catching Fire increases the scope and posits Katniss as the symbolic head of a resistance movement against the totalitarian regime headed by President Snow, played in both films by Donald Sutherland.  He's part of an ensemble that includes Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Elizabeth Banks, Woody Harrelson, Wes Bentley, and Stanley Tucci.

The Hunger Games arrives on March 23rd, with Catching Fire scheduled to hit on November 22, 2013.