What you need to know before watching ‘The Hunger Games: Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes’

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is located 64 years before Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) offered herself as a tribute and decades before Coriolanus Snow (Donald Sutherland) became the tyrannical president of Panem.

After publication in 2020 – the book of Susanne Collins which inspired the new film – became a bestseller, welcomed by thousands of fans who had already read his three previous successful novels by The Hunger Games: The Hunger Games, catching fire And Mockingjay, which were also adapted to the big screen years ago.

So the movie that premieres in Ecuador on Thursday, November 16 expands the timeline of the literary and film franchise, visiting the difficult first days of the sensational broadcast of the games.

Moreover, the novel remembers the young Coriolanus Snow and his days as a studentas he begins his journey that will ultimately lead him to the presidency of Panem.

The producer Nina Jacobson notes, “I was very fascinated trying to understand the appeal of why someone, like young Snow, might choose authoritarianism. You are not born the way you become; you shape it. I could see how a country can become authoritarian if people decide they feel safer when the state has power.”

collins He was still writing the novel when he decided to call director Francis Lawrence to tell him about his new creative process. “Suzanne started by simply telling me, ‘I wrote a book.’ And I was excited to hear this because I, along with countless fans of The hunger Games, We thought it would be great to do another part where we explored that world, and we always felt like it had to come from Suzanne.. The fact that she called me to be re-inspired and bring us back into the fold with rich thematic material was exciting,” he recalls.

But despite its close thematic connection to the other films in the series, The new 2 hour and 38 minute film offers an original narrative landscape.

According to his producer the blood that runs through the first four films runs through the veins of this one.

“It was really exciting to show a different side at a different time, especially because it fleshes out the stories you know and draws you into its own story,” says Jacobson. “Seeing Panem through the eyes of a young Snow has been a complete paradigm shift for us. Though still in power, the Capitol is reeling from the fallout of a war that is a distant memory in Katniss’s stories but recent to Snow. Seeing the formative influences and seeing how Snow is shaped by those people and by his unexpected relationship with Lucy Gray Baird sheds new light on his relationship with Katniss. and about the future of Panem.”

Tom Blyth the young Coriolanus plays along Rachel Zegler in the role of Lucy Gray Baird, a tribute from the impoverished District 12.

“Tom was a revelation. Snow was a very difficult role to play. As an actor, the person clearly had to have a capacity for darkness. But you still want to believe that things can end well. And then you meet an actor, like Tom Blyth, who brings enough authenticity and specificity to his performance to feel like I could actually take a different path,” they comment on the to pour.