‘The Hunger Games’ Is Very Similar To ‘American Idol,’ Says Keith Urban
The Hunger Games tells the story of a deadly competition where kids kill each other for the endless amusement of the masses. According to Keith Urban, it’s not unlike what goes down each and every week on American Idol.
Although no one dies over the source of the singing competition, the country music star apparently sees many similarities between the television show and Suzanne Collins’ insanely popular novel. Should ratings drop during this season of the program, then the executives at FOX could decide to introduce some Hunger Games-style mayhem into the mix.
“There’s friendliness, but you’ve got the rivalry too. Let’s not deny it, it is ‘The Hunger Games,'” Urban explained during his chat with Ryan Seacrest.
He added, “I think in cases like… Sam (Woolf), you know, he’s 17 and he’s got this incredible voice. But there’s a life experience thing that’s got to come into play. You know what’s great is we’re actually seeing little bits of that happening week to week because of what happens off-camera, what these guys are going through, being away from home.”
Some people may see parallels between The Hunger Games and the FOX show, at least the folks who are ultimately sent packing still have their skin intact. Unfortunately, the same thing doesn’t ring true for some of the characters in Collins’ series.
In addition to discussing The Hunger Games, Keith took a moment to address the rivalry between the judges. While there’s no serious animosity taking place behind-the-scenes — nothing on-pair with Mariah Carey and Nicki Minay, anyway — he did say that don’t always see things the same way.
“We disagree about a lot of things because we’re just wired differently and we respond differently to music. We react differently, different things appeal to us, different things impress us. Although that’s not true, nothing impresses Harry,” Urban explained.
Despite the problems that the show faced last season, the country singer is still very excited to lend his talents to American Idol. Urban also explained that he learned a lot about how the show operates the first time around.
“I like the diversity that we’ve got. I also think that Idol has always played very, very well in those places, the Midwest and the sort of rural states that have huge country audiences, so I am really grateful to be on the panel because of that, and hopefully we can discover some exceptional country talent this year too,” he explained.
The singer added, “I don’t have a personal front-runner because we’ve already seen, for me, the surprise of who ends up in the bottom three next week, and it’s not really been consistent.”
Do you agree that American Idol is similar to The Hunger Games?
[Image via DFree / Shutterstock.com]
