VIDEO: The Hunger Games Trailer Whets Fans' Appetites

Devotees of The Hunger Games series who happened to be watching the VMA's Sunday night were given a bit of the upcoming film adaptation to nibble on, albeit an achingly small bit. The minute-long teaser trailer for the film, set in a dystopian future where kids must battle each other to the death for entertainment, was comprised of little more than shots of star Jennifer Lawrence (Winter's Bone) running through the woods. Lawrence, who plays protagonist Katniss Everdeen in the film, was not present at Sunday's ceremony because The Hunger Games is still shooting.

The adaptation of the bestselling Suzanne Collins novel is directed by Gary Ross, whose biggest challenge is in capturing a story narrated on the page in first person. "I think one of the most important things when you adapt a book like this is to give people the experience they really had when they read it — the same kind of visceral experience they had," Ross told MTV News. "I think [the reason] everybody felt so strongly in what [Collins] did was that they were with this character, they understood her, they were in her shoes, they were in her head. It was such an intense first-person experience. My job in making a film is first and foremost to reflect that."

The voice-over heard in the trailer is Everdeen's pal Gale Hawthorne, played by Liam Hemsworth, who does not play as prominent role in the first book as he does in subsequent chapters, but is still a central voice in Everdeen's head during the events the first film covers, Ross explained.

Watch the trailer here: