After 4 movies and 3 billion dollars, The Hunger Games is back without Jennifer Lawrence, but with the villain of the saga!

The Hunger Games: The Rebellion Part 2 After eight years, the $3 billion dystopian saga, adapted from the works of Susan Collins, returns to cinemas! Once again directed by Francis Lawrence, who has already worked on 3 of the previous 4 films in the franchise, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of the Serpent and the Songbird is adapted from the novel of the same name, which was released in 2020.

The story takes place 64 years before the adventures of Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence), Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) and Gale (Liam Hemsworth) and returns to the youth of Panem’s fearsome president, Coriolanus Snow, played at the time by Donald Sutherland.

In The Hunger Games: The Ballad of the Snake and the Bird18-year-old Coriolanus is the last hope of his lineage, a once-proud family that has fallen from grace in the post-war Capitol.

With the tenth edition of The Hunger Games approaching, he is given the role of mentor to District 12 tribute Lucy Gray Baird.

After Lucy captures the attention of all of Panem by singing during the harvest ceremony, Coriolanus thinks he can get into the small papers of the Capitol and tip the scales in their favor. Then it’s a race against time for Snow and Lucy.

In this prequel, British actor Tom Blyth slips into the shoes of young Coriolanus Snow, Rachel Zeigler, who appeared in Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story and the next Snow White from Disney’s live-action film, lends his features to Lucy, Hunter Shaffer (Julie Euphoria) is Tigress Snow, Coriolanus’ cousin, Josh Andres Rivera is Sejanus Plint, Snow’s friend, and Viola Davis plays the cruel Dr. Volumnia Gaul, creator of the 10th edition of The Hunger Games.

Peter Dinklage, of Tyrion Lannister fame in Game of Thrones, plays Casca Highbottom, the dean of the academy, and Jason Schwartzman is Lucretius Flickerman, the Games host and ancestor of Caesar Flickerman (Stanley Tucci).

Discover the characters of this new opus.

You made the big bad of the saga look bad

The main difficulty of this film is to manage to make the hero – the great villain of the first saga – sympathetic. So it was Tom Blythe who was entrusted with this difficult task.

We were able to speak with the cast to promote the film. Actor Billy the Kid, already seen in the series, explains that he tried to separate himself from the original character.

“This franchise has been around for so long that Coriolanus Snow is considered one of the great villains of cinema. And it was a challenge to interpret him as a villain in this film because he’s not in this prequel.

He is a young man trying to do well. The question is whether it will succeed, which you will know when you watch the film. But he’s cute and I think 18 would be a relationship with him.

He’s a young man with a cousin and a grandmother he’s trying to protect, and he’s trying to protect their reputation, but he’s trying to succeed the way everyone tells him he should.

The challenge was not to interpret him as a villain in this film.

When he meets Lucy, he will question society and what it does to people and try to save her. Therefore, he is a very protective young man who, without revealing anything to the public, sees that his whole life is in question. He’s going to have to question his own morality because he has to do certain things to protect those he loves.”

Thinking about the words of a colleague, Rachel Zegler Adds our microphone: “I think it ruins it. It breaks his spirit. And I think as the movie goes on, we’re heartbroken because we see him grow cold inside. To me, it’s a fascinating psychological study of character.”

“New Light on His Relationship with Katniss”

Producer Nina Jacobson, who is already at the head of the tetralogy, in the press kit says:

“I really wanted to know what makes a character like Snow stand in the way of an authoritarian regime. We are not born this way – we are influenced by several factors that shape our personality. I can understand a country moving towards an authoritarian regime when citizens feel safer under a strong government“.

“Discovering Panem through the eyes of young Snow was a complete paradigm shift for us. The Capitol, though still in power, has recovered from the effects of a war that remains only a distant memory in Katniss’s stories, but which is much more recent. for snow

As we see Snow developed by these important characters and his unexpected relationship with Lucy Gray Bird, we shed new light on his relationship with Katniss and the future of Panem.“, he adds.

The study of human nature

Susan Collins He wrote this novel in 2019. The novelist wanted to explore various aspects of human nature. He then asserted:

“With this book I want to explore the state of nature, who we are and what we consider necessary for our survival. The ten-year period of reconstruction after the war, commonly known as the Dark Days—when the country of Panem is getting back on its feet—provides fertile ground for the characters to grapple with these questions and thereby define humanity’s vision.“

And it was while writing his prequel that Collins got in touch Francis Lawrence. The director explains in the press kit: “Susannah just said, ‘I’m writing a book.’ I was happy to hear this because, like many fans of the saga, I thought it would be nice to see a new opus that explored the world. The Hunger Games – and we always said it had to come from Susan.

The fact that he was the one who called me and that he wanted to immerse us in this adventure of great thematic richness seemed incomparable to me..”

Rachel Zegler: The heroine who is a fan of Saga

And the cast of this new opus seems excited to be a part of the Hunger Games universe. It is worth noting Rachel Zegler, who lends her qualities to the heroine Lucy, who was a big fan of the franchise, especially the books. He also tells us:

“I read all the books when they came out. In The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, I remember sitting outside the bookstore at midnight to be one of the first to read the final chapter with Katniss. I was obsessed with books, like my mother and my sister.

When The Ballad of the Serpent and the Songbird came out, we only had one copy at home because it was in the middle of the COVID pandemic. My sister read it, then she gave it to my mother, then she gave it to me. And I became obsessed.”

in turn Josh Andres Rivera (Rachel Zegler’s City Partner), who plays Sejanus Plint, has a special history with romances.

“I have a little funny story. When I was in high school, I was sent to study hall because my grades were pretty bad. We had a very good librarian who gave me the first Hunger Games book to make me want to read. And it worked.

This was the first book I read and couldn’t put it down. I absolutely loved it. I went to the theater to see the movie right after its release. So the Hunger Games played an important role in my life.”

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of the Snake and the Bird You can see it in theaters this Wednesday, November 15th.