Lionsgate shared the long-awaited first trailer for its Hunger Games prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, on Thursday (27 April).
The film will focus on the backstory of the Games’ oppressive president Coriolanus Snow, played by Donald Sutherland in the original trilogy that starred Jennifer Lawrence.
The trailer gives us a first proper look at Tom Blyth as an 18-year-old Snow and Rachel Zegler as District 12 tribute Lucy Gray Baird.
Fans immediately spotted that Zegler curtseys sarcastically in the trailer, just as Lawrence’s Katniss did in the original.
The clip also teases Zegler – known for her work in musicals such as West Side Story – performing some musical melodies on stage.
Elsewhere in the star-studded trailer are Viola Davis and Peter Dinklage as head game maker Volumnia Gaul and Casa Highbottom, Dean of the Academy, respectively.
“As a mentor,” Highbottom says, “Your job is to turn these people into spectacles, not survivors.”
“Dean Highbottom is one of the most powerful people in Snow’s life. As the austere and vindictive face of the games, he sets the rules that will determine every aspect of Coriolanus’s fate,” director Francis Lawrence previously told Empire of Dinklage’s casting.
The prequel’s logline reads: “Years before he would become the tyrannical President of Panem, 18-year-old Coriolanus Snow is the last hope for his fading lineage, a once-proud family that has fallen from grace in a post-war Capitol.
“With the 10th annual Hunger Games fast approaching, the young Snow is alarmed when he is assigned to mentor Lucy Gray Baird, the girl tribute from impoverished District 12. But, after Lucy Gray commands all of Panem’s attention by defiantly singing during the reaping ceremony, Snow thinks he might be able to turn the odds in their favour.”
It continued: “Uniting their instincts for showmanship and newfound political savvy, Snow and Lucy’s race against time to survive will ultimately reveal who is a songbird, and who is a snake.”
The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is out in cinemas 17 November 2023.
