It may have felt like decades since the announcement about The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, the movie spinoff for The Hunger Games, was released, but rest assured it hasn’t been quite that long. Well, it definitely has been long enough and about 10 months after the scrapple of a teaser, we finally get an official trailer, with characters and all!
The trailer was first shown at this week’s CinemaCon trade show in Las Vegas where movie studios present some of their most promising upcoming tentpole movies to the cinema theater owners/chains. From what we see in this trailer, they were given an eyeful.
Some press and even a small group of the franchise’s biggest fans even got to see it a day in advanced at The Hunger Games: The Exhibition, where producer Nina Jacobson and director Francis Lawrence were on hand to break down some of the moments in the trailer.
Jacobson spoke about the differences between The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes protagonist Lucy Gray Baird and the previous Hunger Games films’ protagonist Katniss Everdeen.
“She’s such a different character from Katniss. She’s such a performer. Katniss is the opposite. This is a woman who loves and lives to perform. To see the connection there, the history that she represents, and to think that Katniss Everdeen grew up knowing about Lucy Gray and this moment, it was just a great kind of microcosm of both how much of a new ground it is and how rooted it is in what we’ve seen, but in this backward-looking way.”
-Nina Jacobson, Variety
Lawrence also talked about fleshing out the character of Lucky Flickerman, played with a striking resemblance to his successor Caesar Flickerman (Stanley Tucci from The Hunger Games films), by Jason Schwartzman. As said in the trailer, Lucky plays the first host of The Hunger Games, which is now in its 10th year, which is one of the hints at how this year’s games sets the precedent for the future of the Games. It’s a minor hint compared to all others, but still it’s something.
About the movie:
THE HUNGER GAMES: THE BALLAD OF SONGBIRDS & SNAKES follows a young Coriolanus (Tom Blyth) who is the last hope for his failing lineage, the once-proud Snow family that has fallen from grace in a post-war Capitol. With his livelihood threatened, Snow is reluctantly assigned to mentor Lucy Gray Baird (Rachel Zegler), a tribute from the impoverished District 12. But after Lucy Gray’s charm captivates the audience of Panem, Snow sees an opportunity to shift their fates. With everything he has worked for hanging in the balance, Snow unites with Lucy Gray to turn the odds in their favor. Battling his instincts for both good and evil, Snow sets out on a race against time to survive and reveal if he will ultimately become a songbird or a snake.
The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes stars Rachel Zegler as Lucy Baird, Tom Blyth as Coriolanus Snow, Peter Dinklage as Casca Highbottom, Jason Schwartzman as Lucky Flickerman, and Viola Davis as Volumnia Gaul.