The Starving Games

The Starving Games is a comedy that parodies The Hunger Games. In a bleak future, young Kantmiss Evershot volunteers for the 75th edition of the Starving Games, leaving behind Dale, the friend who is not quite her boyfriend, and teaming up with Peter, the baker's son. The contest's prizes are deliberately trivial: an old ham, a sandwich coupon and a half-eaten pickle. Along the way the film also sends up other recent hits, including The Avengers, Sherlock Holmes and the Harry Potter series.

Jason Friedberg directed, and he wrote the screenplay with Aaron Seltzer; the two also produced alongside Peter Safran. The film continues the pair's run of genre spoofs, following Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans, Disaster Movie and Vampires Suck, with Superfast! arriving two years later. Maiara Walsh plays Kantmiss, Cody Christian is Peter, Brant Daugherty is Dale, and Diedrich Bader appears as President Snowballs, with Lauren Bowles and Ross Wyngaarden among a credited cast of 49.

Made for a modest 5 million dollars, the film opened in November 2013 and runs 83 minutes. It fared poorly with viewers: on IMDb it holds 3.3 out of 10 from around 24,000 votes, and on TMDB 4.2 out of 10 from roughly 700 votes. A critics' rating of 1.6 out of 10 from nine reviews places it below even those audience scores.