The Hunger Games The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes Movie (20230 - Special Feature - Welcome Back to Panem - Plot synopsis: Experience the story of THE HUNGER GAMES -- 64 years before Katniss Everdeen volunteered as tribute, and decades before Coriolanus Snow became the tyrannical President of Panem. 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.
directed by Francis Lawrence
starring Tom Blyth, Rachel Zegler, Peter Dinklage, Hunter Schafer, Josh Andres Rivera, Jason Schwartzman, Viola Davis
release date November 17, 2023 (in theaters)
directed by Francis Lawrence
starring Tom Blyth, Rachel Zegler, Peter Dinklage, Hunter Schafer, Josh Andres Rivera, Jason Schwartzman, Viola Davis
release date November 17, 2023 (in theaters)
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00 (thunder rumbling)
00:02 How tantalizing to see all your shining young faces
00:09 on this auspicious day.
00:10 I am Dr. Volumnia Ghaul, your humble head game maker
00:16 in charge of the War Department
00:18 and all its affiliated concerns.
00:21 I am honored to introduce to you
00:24 the creator of the Hunger Games themselves,
00:28 Dean Casca Highbottom.
00:31 I have summoned you all here today
00:33 for the 10th Annual Reaping Ceremony
00:36 in which we choose two children from each district
00:39 to throw into the capital arena
00:42 to fight to the death in the Hunger Games.
00:45 I am here to tell you
00:46 that there has been a change this year.
00:49 One final assignment to prove your worth.
00:53 It's a story that takes place 64 years
00:54 before the first installment of the movies
00:57 and focuses on young Snow.
01:00 Look at you.
01:00 Your makeshift shirt and your too tight shoes
01:04 trying desperately to fit in.
01:07 When I know the Snows don't have a pot to piss in.
01:11 Snow is being groomed to become the man he becomes.
01:16 As a mentor, your role is to turn these children
01:19 into spectacles, not survivors.
01:22 Persuade them to perform for the camera.
01:27 Lucy Gray, the one who Snow becomes the mentor for
01:30 and also falls in love with,
01:32 there's a very naturalistic quality to her,
01:35 but she's a charmer, she's a musician,
01:37 she's a performer, she's kind of the anti-catniss.
01:40 She's part of the Covey,
01:41 this kind of roving band of musicians.
01:45 Snow's never met anybody like her.
01:47 That romance between them makes Snow question
01:51 everything he was raised to believe.
01:55 I think there's a natural goodness born into us all.
01:59 You know, really, you can either cross that line
02:02 into evil or not.
02:06 And it's our life's work to stay
02:08 on the right side of that line.
02:09 Part of the love story starts to fall apart
02:12 and that is part of the creation of who he becomes.
02:17 It's the things we love most that destroy us.
02:22 Most everybody that I work with is coming back
02:25 and Trish Somerville is doing the costumes for this movie.
02:28 Bill Willems, who shot Catching Fire, The Mockingjays.
02:31 The one new person that I'm really excited about
02:33 is Uli Hanisch, who's the production designer.
02:36 We talked about the sort of look and the feel of the movie.
02:39 The visuals of this movie will be very different
02:41 than Mockingjay, but there's real consistency
02:44 in terms of the capital architecture.
02:47 We get to sort of reinvent the world of Panem,
02:50 to sort of deconstruct what the games are
02:52 that we're sort of used to and go back in time.
02:55 It wasn't until I read it that I saw how much music
02:58 was actually in here and we met with Dave Cobb.
03:00 He's a fantastic songwriter and producer.
03:03 It's gonna be fun to take all this history
03:05 of British Isles music and Southern music
03:07 and mash it all together in this dystopian way
03:09 in this future.
03:11 James Newton Howard, it's my fourth
03:13 Hunger Games film with him.
03:15 The musical opportunity is great.
03:17 Relationships are very powerful in the movie.
03:21 The good and the bad are very clearly laid out.
03:25 For James and I, it was really fun to explore
03:28 a new sound for the Hunger Games.
03:30 Sometimes it's foot stomping and rousing
03:33 and sometimes it's haunting, mysterious,
03:36 and a lot of that is based on the kind of period
03:38 of the movie itself.
03:40 There's gonna be some familiar elements as well.
03:43 - Hanging Tree is back in a completely different
03:46 iteration and treatment.
03:48 - Here we get to see Lucy Gray coming up with it
03:51 for the first time.
03:52 (dramatic music)
03:55 ♪ Are you ♪
04:00 ♪ Are you ♪
04:03 ♪ Coming to the tree ♪
04:06 ♪ Where I told you to run ♪
04:09 ♪ So we'd both be free ♪
04:13 ♪ Strange things did happen here ♪
04:15 ♪ No stranger would it be ♪
04:19 ♪ If we made up at midnight ♪
04:24 ♪ In the hanging tree ♪
04:32 (dramatic music)
04:38 (gunshots)
04:41 (dramatic music)
04:43 (dramatic music)
04:46 [music]