Everyone is very pretty and very hungry in the new Hunger Games prequel trailer

The Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes brings us (and Peter Dinklage, Viola Davis, Jason Schwartzman, and more) back to the dystopia of Panem

Everyone is very pretty and very hungry in the new Hunger Games prequel trailer
Tom Blyth and Rachel Zegler Photo: Murray Close/Lionsgate

It’s been 8 years since The Hunger Games: Mockingjay—Part Two hit theaters, bringing the story of Katniss Everdeen and the Hunger Games to a (very mutedly) positive conclusion. But just like those well-dressed psychopaths in the Capitol, moviegoers have still got a taste for killing games and flashy spectacle, and so here we are: Feasting on the new trailer for Hunger Games prequel project The Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes, rolled out at CinemaCon earlier today.

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes (2023) Official Trailer – Tom Blyth

And while the plot of the film is a bit hard to parse from the trailer—readers of Suzanne Collins’ 2020 source novel will presumably have a better grasp on all this—the basic principles of a Hunger Games movie are still clearly in play: Pretty youngsters killing each other for the delight of well-heeled monsters, with rebellion bubbling up at the edges. Our central characters this time are Lucy (Rachel Zegler), a tribute in the upcoming 10th games, and Coriolanus Snow (Tom Blyth), a Capitol resident assigned as her mentor—and who is still decades away from transforming into a fascist-chic Donald Sutherland from the original films.

Meanwhile, the series sticks to another one of its core principles: Hiring damn fine performers to play the grown-ups in the room, with Viola Davis and Peter Dinklage as the architects of the current games. (Meanwhile, only Jason Schwartzman seems to be having any actual fun as Lucky Flickerman, a weatherman and “amateur magician” who serves as the film’s resident Stanley Tucci stand-in.) All the hallmarks are here, in other words: Pretty locations, pretty people, pretty little murders. (They even manage to work Rue’s four-note song right there in the ending.)

The Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes—mouthful of a title, by the way—arrives in theaters on November 17.

 
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