News
All the latest news about the movie adaptation of
The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
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New stills of Sejanus Plinth, Lucky Flickerman and Lucy Gray Baird on Nerdist.Com -
Meet the Tributes of the 10th Hunger Games in New Images on Collider -
Tom Blyth, Rachel Zegler and Josh Andres Rivera LIVE on Good Morning America -
New Behind The Scenes videos of Hunter Schafer and Viola Davis on set -
New Coriolanus x Sejanus Ad-Teaser for The Ballad Songbirds & Snakes
Media & Interview
- 09/07/2023
- The Mockingjay's Nest
Exclusive new BTS picture and Nina Jacobson Interview
Polygon revealed an exclusive Behind The Scenes picture from the shooting of “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” in an exclusive interview with the film producer Nina Jacobson.
In this interview, Nina Jacobson discusses the casting, Suzanne Collins’ questions and intentions in the prequel, and even gives us a small hint about the film’s opening scenes, which will depict Coriolanus’s childhood.
Rachel Zegler (Lucy Gray Baird), Luna Steeples (Dill), Cooper Dillon (Mizzen), Nina Jacobson (Producer) and Lucas Wilson (Panlo)
Nina Jacobson previews the unsettling creative approach to November’s big prequel
“You could have gone with a fan favorite — Let’s do Haymitch’s story! Or do Finnick’s games! — but that would be doing it to do it,” Jacobson tells Polygon. “If [Collins] had a story in this world with something she wanted to talk about, something to explore, then great. But if not, better to leave a franchise as something people feel fondly about rather than crank out a sequel for the sake of a sequel.”
Jacobson never spoke to Collins while Songbirds and Snakes was in development, but after reading the grim 517-page odyssey, she had no hesitation over whether the film franchise could continue. The movie adaptation arrives Nov. 17.
“Suzanne, the originator and North Star of everything that we try to do with these books, she doesn’t write just to make money,” Jacobson says. “She writes when she has something to say.”
THE BIG QUESTIONS AT THE HEART OF SONGBIRDS & SNAKES
“Are we fundamentally good if left to our own devices? Are we fundamentally bad and need the state to keep us in check or we’ll destroy each other? These ideas about how people perceive each other and the government, and what they need based on those perceptions, felt so incredibly timely. And to do it through Coriolanus Snow, somebody we’ve all spent the last four movies hating, felt like a particularly interesting and original approach,” she says.
The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes is compelling on paper, and a gamble in the modern marketplace. Jacobson admits the “original movies are very political, but they aren’t partisan or polarizing as far as our domestic politics [go].” Songbirds & Snakes, on the other hand, may feel more pointed in response to the ideological “roller coaster of the last decade.”
MEET THE COMBATANTS, INSIDE AND OUTSIDE THE HUNGER GAMES
The turbulence of postwar Panem leaves a wannabe nepo baby like Coriolanus Snow destitute and scrapping to keep up appearances. Only in the current Capitol can an esteemed mentor and scion of a rich and powerful family have a luxury apartment stocked only with gruel. Jacobson says the movie opens on an image from when Coriolanus is a child “and people are literally starving and doing whatever they have to to survive during war. It’s an essential part of who he is and who he becomes.”
Relative newcomer Tom Blyth (Benediction) plays the 19-year-old version of Coriolanus, portrayed with steely malevolence by Donald Sutherland in the original movies. “He has enormous self-control, composure,” Jacobson says of Blyth, who not only matched the look of a young “Coryo,” but had Sutherland’s “intrinsic qualities” of being a subtle showman.
Schafer’s involvement is particularly exciting. While the actor-model-activist’s spellbinding turn on Euphoria has been lauded as an achievement for trans actors and representation, the role of Tigris stands to be a totally different kind of flex than the grounded high school drama. “For Hunter to represent hope and optimism about humanity, see people as human beings and not as representatives of an idea, I think that makes it a particularly interesting role for her to play,” Jacobson says of the casting. “People connect to her as a human being beyond all the vitriol and politics of this moment — people find her immensely relatable.”
HOPE: STILL THE ONLY THING STRONGER THAN FEAR
So when The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes enters the arena this November, bowing in a moment of turbulence and without the typical PR blitz, it’ll basically be resting on its laurels. Luckily, according to Jacobson, Collins’ novel offered plenty to bite on. And the Hunger Games creative team bit.
“When you are living in a polarizing time, it is so much easier to assume difference is hostility and demonize the other,” she says. “This [story] is about finding connections, and finding out that you might have enormous connections to the last person in the world that you think you’d have anything in common with.”