Jennifer Lawrence teams up with Hunger Games director for East of Eden: Is Oscar number two a formality?

Lawrence also set to appear in adaptation of Hannah Kent's Burial Rites

Jennifer Lawrence is one of Hollywood's most in-demand actresses (Getty Images)

She won the Best Actress Oscar for her role in Silver Linings Playbook, but it appears that Jennifer Lawrence is keen to nab her second and third Academy Awards after signalling her interest in two prestigious new projects.

The 23-year-old actress and The Hunger Games director Gary Ross will team up once again for a new adaptation of Nobel Prize-winning author John Steinbeck's East of Eden.

According to Deadline, Lawrence and Ross are also said to be pursuing the rights to Burial Rites, Hannah Kent's acclaimed debut novel. In the book, set in 19th century Iceland, a woman is condemned to death for her part in her lover's murder.

Both projects come stacked with awards potential, and adaptations of Steinbeck's 1952 novel have a history of producing prize-winners at major ceremonies.

Lawrence is set to play the evil, manipulative Cathy Ames. Jo Van Fleet, who starred in the 1955 Elia Kazan version alongside James Dean, won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for the same role. Jane Seymour's take on Cathy in a television mini-series bagged her a Golden Globe in 1982.

East of Eden isn't the only Steinbeck adaptation in the works. Steven Spielberg is thought to have secured Grapes of Wrath for his studio, Dreamworks. Wrath, which won the Pulitzer Prize, tells the story of a poor farming family's journey from Oklahoma to the promised land of California.