Hunger Games District 12 site up for auction

A small North Carolina village that stood in for District 12 in the movie The Hunger Games is up for auction.

The Henry River Mill Village, located nearHildebran, N.C.,is the former home of a textile mill in a run-down coal-mining region. The 29-hectare site, which includes 22 buildings, was abandoned in 1987.

Joe Maddalena, the owner of Hollywood auction house Profiles in History, plans to auction off the site via sealed bids. The bidding deadline is July 31. The village is valued at more than $1.2 million US.

Owner Wade Shepherd is seeking to sell the site because he was tired of the masses of tourists visiting the site, one of sets for the popular movie based on the bestselling novel seriesby Suzanne Collins.

In The Hunger Games, heroine Katniss Everdeen lives in a hard-scrabble coal-mining region known as District 12, part of a larger, post-apocalyptic America. The people of her district battle poverty and a tyrannical government that calls on each community to send a teen boy and girl to battle to the death against teens from other regions.

When Lionsgate arrived to film in Henry River Mill Village, they didn't have to change a thing, Maddalena said.

"The buildings are identical and it's really eerie when you're there, standing in Katniss' house," he said.

In addition to the Everdeen home, the site features the Mellark bakery, home of Katniss' fellow Hunger Games contestant Peeta Mellark.

North Carolina's official tourism site promotes a four-day Hunger Games tour that includes a visit to the fictional District 12, but the site is otherwise closed to the public.

Maddalena says the sale of the village is "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity" to own a piece of movie history.