The Hunger Games Prequel Releases This Friday: All We Know
There are still plenty of big movie releases to come in 2023, like Napoleon, Leave The World Behind and Wonka, and one you should definitely have on your radar is the upcoming Hunger Games prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.
Set to star Rachel Zegler (West Side Story) and Tom Byth (The Gilded Age), the film will take us back before the days of Katiniss Everdeen and her revolutionary fight to the year of the 10th Hunger Games. It’ll chart the rise of future President Snow and the actions that led him to one day become the most powerful man in Panem. Landing this Friday, here’s what you need to know…
What is The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes about?
Set some 64 years before the first film in the franchise, Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is firmly a prequel, taking us back to the world of tributes, districts and fights to the death. It’s based on the novel released by Suzanne Collins a few years ago, which, while not capturing the same attention as the original Hunger Games books did, was still fairly successful.
Decades pre-Katniss Everdeen, Coriolanus Snow (Blyth) is not yet the calculating and ruthless tyrant he would become, though he still shows flashes of his cunning and strategic nature. He’s also the “last hope” for his rich and prestigious family lineage, the reputation of which has been damaged in a nation ruined by war.
What else do we know?
The tenth annual Hunger Games looms over the capitol, and young Coriolanus is assigned the duty of mentoring Lucy Gray Baird (Zegler). She hails from District 12, the small and poverty stricken district that Katniss Everdeen would later call home, and Coriolanus is sceptical of her chances. However, when Lucy (who’s part of a musical group) sings at the reaping ceremony for the games, she captivates the rest of Panem’s attention, and the future president starts to believe that she might be the winning ticket after all.
Who else stars, and is there a release date?
The rest of the cast includes Game of Thrones star Peter Dinklage, who’ll be playing Dean of the Academy, Casca Highbottom, Euphoria’s Hunter Schafer as Coriolanus’ cousin Tigris, Josh Andrés Rivera as Coriolanus’s friend Sejanus Plinth, Jason Schwartzman as TV host Lucky Flickerman, and Viola Davis as gamemaker Dr. Volumnia Gau. The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is set to release later this year on 17th November, and you can watch the first official trailer below.
