Discover the secret past of President Coriolanus Snow that sent a once kind man on the path to becoming the tyrannical ruler of Panem in The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, a prequel to the hit Hunger Games franchise which spawned four blockbusters in the 2010s.
Suzanne Collins’ prequel novel was published in 2020. It was met with mixed reactions and critiques, as many were put off by the recasting the villainous Snow as a hero. But Lionsgate craved new Hunger Games material to adapt and immediately moved forward with a film version. Francis Lawrence, who directed the majority of the Hunger Games movies (Gary Ross helmed the first), returns.
Tom Blyth will portray Snow, a role previously embodied by Donald Sutherland in the originals. This ambitious 18-year-old finds his world divided between the lovely tribute Lucy Gray Baird (Rachel Zegler) and the villainous Dr. Volumnia Gaul (Viola Davis).
Now, we get our first look at Blyth as Snow and Zegler as Lucy Gray. Check it out:
It’s not exactly the most action-packed reveal. This looks like a Nicholas Sparks movie. But since this story does involve the Hunger Games, expect this to be a tender moment sprinkled in between brutal action sequences. (I mean… something sets Snow down the path to tyranny, and the loss of the love of his life could do that.)
According to Lawrence:
“This is very much a story about love. It’s this kind of love story set in a different kind of a world in a different time. A very intimate love story.”
Regarding Zegler’s character, he added:
“This is not with judgment, but Lucy Gray is the anti-Katniss. She’s a musician, she’s a performer, she’s a charmer…. Snow has never met a girl like this before.”
Hunter Schafer, Jason Schwartzman, and Peter Dinklage also star, with Schafer playing Coriolanus’ cousin Tigris Snow, Schwartzman as Hunger Games host Lucretius “Lucky” Flickerman (an ancestor of Caesar Flickerman), and Dinklage as Casca Highbottom, the Dean of the Academy and co-creator of The Hunger Games.
And don’t expect the same Panem, as Ballad takes place 46 years before the first Hunger Games novel and movie. According to producer Nina Jacobson:
“It’s completely different stylistically, in terms of design, character, and point of view. To be able to show a different side of Panem at a different time in its history has been really exciting.”
To summarize why fans may want to check out Ballads despite misgivings over Snow’s recasting as a hero, Lawrence said:
“Suzanne has done such a great job of going back into the mythology and telling a story about the creation of the world. You get a little background of Katniss. You will obviously get a lot of the background of Snow, the history of the Games, the history of some of the music, where songs like ‘The Hanging Tree’ actually come from.
“As much as we may hate [Snow] in the later movies, to see that he is a real human being…there is something really satisfying about that.”
The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes will be released in theaters on November 17, 2023.
