Hunger Games Return In First Ballad Of Songbirds & Snakes Trailer

Lionsgate has released a teaser trailer for The Hunger Games prequel The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes well over a year before its release date.

Lionsgate has unveiled the first teaser for The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, the prequel film to the hit YA franchise. Released in 2020, ten years after the publication of Mockingjay, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes was the highly anticipated prequel to Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Game book series. The story is set years before the original series and focuses on a young Coriolanus Snow, who grows up to be the villainous President Snow. He was played by Donald Sutherland in the Hunger Games films.

In April 2020, just a month before The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes‘ release, it was announced that Lionsgate was in development on an adaptation of the film with Francis Lawrence, who directed The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and both Mockingjay adaptations, returning at the helm. Tom Blythe, who plays the lead role in the Epix original series Billy the Kid, has signed on as the young Snow. More recently, West Side Story star Rachel Zegler was cast in the pivotal role of Lucy Gray Baird, a young girl from District 12 who forms a connection with the future ruler of Panem.

Related: Who Is Tom Blyth? Where You Know Hunger Games’ Young Snow Actor From

Lionsgate has released an official teaser trailer for The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. No live-action footage is shown, as the film has yet to begin principal photography, but the announcement trailer features a snowy forest where a golden songbird emerges – as well as a snake. The trailer promises audiences a return to the games in 2023. Watch the trailer for The Hunger Games prequel below:

Click Here to Watch the Video on YouTube

While the trailer is listed as a reveal, it is unclear if Lionsgate intends to have it play in theaters. With Jurassic World Dominion releasing in theaters this week, putting the brief teaser in front of the highly anticipated blockbuster would put The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes on audiences’ radars, particularly those who are unaware of a new installment in the Hunger Games franchise being on the way. While it is over a year away from its release, the imagery in the teaser certainly evokes much intrigue as it sets up the tense dynamic between Snow and Lucy. One is a songbird, and one is a snake, and as the trailer hints, that leads to conflict.

By the time The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes arrives in theaters, it will have been eight years since The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2, and Lionsgate likely hopes nostalgia for the series will carry the film to the franchise’s previous highs. The Hunger Games was one of the biggest film series in the early to mid-2010s, with each installment landing in the worldwide top 10 box office of their respective years. Lionsgate has set The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes for a November 2023 release date, the same pre-Thanksgiving Friday that propelled the latter three Hunger Games films from Lawrence to box office highs. Only time will tell if that can happen again.

Next: Hunger Games Prequel Casting Teases 1 Major Book Fix

Source: Lionsgate

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