The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes: Hunter Schafer Used To Draw Her Own Hunger Games Graphic Novels

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes hits theaters later this week, offering fans of the original The Hunger Games series a new story, albeit one that comes from the past as it goes 64 years before the Hunger Games and follows Coriolanus Snow long before he was the tyrannical president of Panem. It's a film that fans of not just the previous film series but Suzanne Collins' novels is excited about, but it turns out that even in the film's cast, there are some big Hunger Games fans. During a virtual press conference attended by ComicBook.com. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes star Hunter Schafer revealed that she was "deeply obsessed" with the books and even used to draw her own graphic novels for the series.

"I would say probably a nine to a 10 as far as fandom goes," Schafer said. "I read the books in middle school and was deeply obsessed and then saw the first movie and got obsessed with the costumes and I made my own literal Capital person costume for Halloween one year. I was drawing my own graphic novels of the books. It was a real deep obsession for a while. So, it feels really circle to be here now doing this."

Schafer also spoke about her role as Tigris Snow, the older cousin of Coriolanus. Schafer said she feels like she is "aligned" with Tigris and that she's the character she was meant to play.

"I do feel like if I were to play anybody in this book, it was supposed to be her," Schafer said. "I think I feel aligned with how she sort of moves throughout the world and uses fashion as an armor. And I also just admire her values towards family and family first and kind of operating on the fact that she'll do anything for them and that's something that I want to stay aligned with throughout my life."

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes Producer Talks Casting 

Nina Jacobson, who has served as a producer on every film in the franchise, spoke with ComicBook.com about the new film's casting. 

"Well, of course, any time that you're casting somebody, like you say, who's related or a younger version, obviously you're going to lop off a whole bunch of people who could be great, but who just don't look like they would ever grow up to be that person," Jacobson explained. "So you have the demands of, 'Can I believe that this young man becomes that older man?' And then also on the Lucy Gray [Rachel Zegler] front, even though she's not related to anybody, she has to be able to sing to inhabit that performer's personality, but also to kind of convey both the sort of savviness and street smarts of this character."

"And to have those questions of like, 'Is she Songbird or is she Snake?' Because she's always singing, but she's also always got a snake, or not always, but a good amount of the time," Jacobson continued. "So, just a reminder that none of these characters are meant to be all one or the other. And so, you have to get actors who can bring that level of complexity and nuance. It's much easier to just play a straight-up good guy, straight-up bad guy, but to have to kind of live in the middle and the pull and the push, and we wanted audiences to also wonder, is it real or not real?"

What Is The Hunger Games Prequel About?

In The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, years before he would become the tyrannical President of Panem, 18-year-old Coriolanus Snow (Tom Blyth) is the last hope for his fading lineage, a once-proud family that has fallen from grace in a post-war Capitol. With the 10th annual Hunger Games fast approaching, the young Snow is alarmed when he is assigned to mentor Lucy Gray Baird (Rachel Zegler), the girl tribute from impoverished District 12. But, after Lucy Gray commands all of Panem's attention by defiantly singing during the reaping ceremony, Snow thinks he might be able to turn the odds in their favor. Uniting their instincts for showmanship and newfound political savvy, Snow and Lucy's race against time to survive will ultimately reveal who is a songbird, and who is a snake.

"I don't think it was really anything that we fought to keep in," director Francis Lawrence told ComicBook.com in a recent interview. "I think the trick was figuring out how to keep as much of the information in the story as possible, but we had to compress it because this is the longest book in the series. And so making sure that we can get it down to a feature-length, that was just the tricky part." 

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is currently set to be released in theaters on November 17th.