The Hunger Games Prequel Confirmed for 2023 Release

We now know when the next Hunger Games installment will hit the big screen. During Lionsgate's panel at Thursday's CinemaCon presentation, it was announced that The Ballad of Songbird and Snakes, the upcoming prequel film inspired by Suzanne Collins' novel of the same name, will be released in theaters on November 17, 2023. Set 64 years before the events of the original trilogy, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes follows the 18-year old, Coriolanus Snow, who would become the tyrannical President of Panem. The young Snow sees a chance for a change in fortunes when he is chosen to be mentor to Lucy Gray Baird, the girl tribute from impoverished District 12.

The film will see the return of director Francis Lawrence, who helmed the final three installments in the Hunger Games film series. Franchise producer Nina Jacobson and her producing partner Brad Simpson, will produce along with Lawrence, with the script being co-written by Collins, Little Miss Sunshine's michael Arndt, and Michael Lesslie.

"We see the evolution of Snow and that's interesting. But to me, the more interesting part was seeing the evolution of Panem and seeing the Hunger Games in its 10th year and seeing how rudimentary it was," publisher David Levithan said of the book in a 2020 interview, "And seeing how all of the themes and all of the ideas that we'll see later in the trilogy are having their origin story. When you see them in the trilogy, it's a foregone conclusion: The Hunger Games is what it is, it is evil, it is punitive. But seeing where it didn't have to go that direction, seeing how it sort of wobbled, and seeing how the forces pushed it into existence, that was fascinating to me because there are lessons to be learned about human nature and about societies and governments that we would really do well to listen to."

"Everybody at first thought it was going to be a fallen angel story, like Snow's going to be a hero and then something happens and he becomes bad," Levithan added. "What Suzanne shows is that it's so much more complicated than that. His personality was what it was but it was outside forces that either amplify pieces of who you are or help you go a different direction. You see a tug of war in this book."

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As mentioned above, The Ballad of Songbird and Snakes will be released in theaters on November 17, 2023.