Quick Takes: Philip Seymour Hoffman joins ‘Hunger Games’ sequel

Oscar-winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman has joined the cast of “The Hunger Games” sequel “Catching Fire” as head gamemaker Plutarch Heavensbee, according to Lionsgate, the studio behind the movies.

Hoffman will play the sly orchestrator of the 75th annual Hunger Games, replacing the previous gamemaker, Seneca Crane (Wes Bentley), who met an early demise after allowing heroine Katniss Everdeen to manipulate the previous games.

Hoffman will enter the fictional world of Panem, playing opposite “Hunger Games” cast members Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth and Woody Harrelson. The sequel is being directed by Francis Lawrence, who took over for Gary Ross this year.

Production on the movie is set to begin this fall, with the studio already locked into Nov. 22, 2013, as its release date.

—Nicole Sperling

Garcia Marquez has dementia

Nobel Prize-winning novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez is suffering from dementia, which has made him unable to write, his brother says.

“Dementia runs in our family, and he’s now suffering the ravages prematurely due to the cancer that put him almost on the verge of death,” Jaime Garcia Marquez, the author’s younger brother, told students in Cartagena, Colombia, the Guardian newspaper reported.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who is now in his mid-80s, is best known for his novel “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” first published in Spanish in 1967, which has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide. With it, he ushered in the genre known as magic realism, which combined fantastical elements and the real.

Marquez’s other major works include the novels “Love in the Time of Cholera,” “The Autumn of the Patriarch,” “The General in His Labyrinth” and the novella “Chronicle of a Death Foretold.”

—Carolyn Kellogg

Getty assists Rubens project

The Getty Foundation is helping to fund the conservation of a 17th century masterpiece by Dutch artist Peter Paul Rubens. “Triumph of the Eucharist” is a series of panels that resides at the Prado Museum in Madrid.

The Getty said it has awarded close to $390,000 to the museum for the conservation of the piece.

Money for the project is coming from the Getty’s Panel Paintings Initiative, which has also helped to fund the conservation of Albrecht Dürer’s “Adam and Eve,” also at the Prado.

—David Ng

Now she’s the official co-host

Savannah Guthrie made her official debut as Matt Lauer’s co-host on NBC’s “Today” show Monday, shaking off nerves and starting the longtime dominant morning show’s effort to move past a rough patch in its history.

The 40-year-old Guthrie, NBC’s chief legal analyst, said she was honored to have one of those rare jobs “you can describe as fun and actually mean it.”

“This was a little unexpected, as we all know, but I just want to say that I’m so proud and honored to be in a place occupied by so many women I admire,” Guthrie said.

She named all her predecessors from Ann Curry (who left June 28) to Jane Pauley. After saying she hoped she didn’t miss anyone, Lauer replied that “you’ll hear if you did.”

Guthrie has co-hosted the four-hour “Today” show’s 9 a.m. hour for the last year. But the 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. stretch with Lauer is the main event, where it directly competes with morning shows on ABC and CBS.

—Associated Press

Riverdale vs. New Directions

The kids from Riverdale are no strangers to high school angst, worries about fitting in or music. Neither are the teens from “Glee.”

Now, Archie, Betty, Veronica and resident boy genius Dilton Doiley will match wits — and maybe a vocal or two — with the likes of Finn Hudson, Kurt Hummel and Rachel Berry in the pages of “Archie Comics,” said Jon Goldwater, the co-chief executive officer.

Goldwater unveiled the planned collaboration — dubbed “Archie Meets Glee” — on Monday, ahead of Wednesday’s start of Comic-Con in San Diego.

He said the crossover is set for late this year or in early 2013, and is being written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, one of the television show’s writers, who also has comics experience.

—Associated Press

Finally

Book deal: Malcolm Gladwell, author of “The Tipping Point,” “Blink” and “Outliers,” is writing “David and Goliath” for Little Brown and Company, a book about the eternal clash between overdogs and underdogs.