Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games trilogy became one of the best-selling book series of the new century and was adapted into a quadrilogy of mostly successful movies. Collins also authored a prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, that debuted to mixed reviews in 2020. Though Mockingjay Parts I and II didn’t impress critics or fans as much as the original or Catching Fire, they still made north of 600 million dollars. With intellectual property as recognizable and valuable as The Hunger Games universe, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes was always destined for the big screen.
Lionsgate recently announced that the film version is slated to begin production in the first half of 2022. However, Collins has been working with the studio on an adaptation since at least 2019, indicating that turning Collins’ idea for a prequel into a movie was likely planned from the very beginning. Though release schedules are still volatile due to the pandemic’s effect on production and theater operations, Lionsgate hopes to premiere The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes sometime in late 2023 or early 2024. No other information was provided at the time, as the news broke via a corporate quarterly earnings call. A cast has not been chosen, but director Francis Lawrence (who helmed the previous films from Catching Fire on) and writer Michael Arndt (who penned Catching Fire as well as hits like Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Little Miss Sunshine and Toy Story 3) seem to be attached.
The Hunger Games trilogy proper takes place in a dystopian former America, now called Panem, in which children from 12 impoverished districts fight to the death for the entertainment of the wealthy, and as a way to discourage rebellion. Jennifer Lawrence starred as Katniss Everdeen, a dour teenager but skilled survivalist, who volunteers to participate in the games in her younger sister’s place. The films also featured Liam Hemsworth and Josh Hutcherson as Gale and Peeta, the two boys she’s torn between, and Woody Harrelson as Haymitch, her alcoholic, self-loathing mentor.
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes centers on the chief antagonist of the The Hunger Games trilogy, the gleefully authoritarian President Coriolanus Snow. It takes place about 65 years earlier, when Snow is a young man trying to find his place in an unstable post-war Panem. During the war, his mother died in childbirth and his father was killed in battle. His family name still commands respect, and he still lives among the rich and well-connected, but he’s struggling to afford basic necessities like clothes and food. As is the case with the other books in the series, much of the action is structured around the Hunger Games themselves. This time, it’s the 10th annual Hunger Games, and rather than participate (he is one of the Capitol elite, after all), Snow is recruited to mentor District 12’s female tribute, Lucy Gray Baird.
Panem and the 10th annual Hunger Games look and feel distinctly different than they do in the time of Katniss and Peeta. The Capitol is fighting to exert and maintain control, and the tributes, many old enough to remember the war, are less afraid to fight back. Power within the Capitol is still being established, too, so a sense of paranoia and merciless social climbing pervade the Games as well as aristocratic life.
Some readers criticized Collins’ decision to make Snow, a privileged and dictatorial villain, into the protagonist; they worried that they’d be asked to sympathize with a cut-and-dry horrible character just because he’d been assigned a tragic past. Though antihero stories had proven popular on TV (Mad Men, The Sopranos, Breaking Bad), and prequels starring villains remain common at the box office (Maleficent, Cruella), the incredibly hard to identify with President Snow didn’t seem like an obvious fit for this type of spinoff. But The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes doesn’t strictly follow the format of most antihero stories. The book does add considerable dimension to the character, but it never seeks to rationalize or justify his present or future bad behavior. Instead, the narrative functions more as a meditation on human nature and the political systems that try to govern it.
Since The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes occurs several generations prior to The Hunger Games, fans shouldn’t expect many characters from the original films to return. Tigris, a minor character from Mockingjay who alters her body to look like a big, striped cat, is revealed to be Snow’s cousin. For the most part, the new cast of characters will include the early days rulers of Panem, Snow’s peers at school and that fresh round of tributes. Fans will be on the lookout for casting news on who will play young Coriolanus. It’ll be a compelling challenge but a tall order for any actor to fill Donald Sutherland’s shoes and the diplomatically despicable role he created.
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