Josh Hutcherson is looking forward to his "really big year".

The actor is starring in the highly-anticipated The Hunger Games, based on the novel of the same name by Suzanne Collins. The science fiction film tells the story of a group of teenagers who have to fight to the death to save their communities.

The 19-year-old star can't wait for the year ahead, which sees the release of the Gary Ross-directed drama film.

"2012 is going to be a really big year, I'm looking forward to it," he told MTV News.

"[There's going to be] a lot of press, a lot of travelling with that. I'm excited for The Hunger Games to come out and see how that does and hopefully get started on the second one."

Josh is eager to expand his film expertise. The star hopes to get behind the camera at some point in his career.

"I want to get into directing and producing and writing my own stuff at some point. I'm kind of just tiptoeing into that as well," he said.

"It's all about balance; everything in life is about balance, in my opinion. You have to do the big studio movies to keep people caring about you in a way, and also for me, I've been really fortunate. I haven't done any big studio movies that suck. They've all been good material and that's the most important thing for my career, to choose the right material and to choose the characters that I care about and stories I want to tell.

"So that's kind of how I've gone about my career since I was 9, more or less."