Earlier this year, The Hunger Games author, Suzanne Collins, released The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, which served as a prequel to the beloved trilogy. The book was an origin story for President Snow, the character who was portrayed by Donald Sutherland in the films. The book is soon being adapted into a movie, so Entertainment Weekly rounded up some information shared at the recent New York Comic-Con panel.
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“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 shared. “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.”
You can read a description for The Hunger Games prequel below:
“Set 64 years before the events of the original trilogy, Ballad revisits the world of Panem from the perspective of its future tyrannical dictator, President Snow, as he’s assigned to mentor District 12’s female tribute at the 10th Hunger Games in an ironic twist of foreshadowing. The book opens on the morning of the reaping, an event that Hunger Games fans know all too well. But this time, we see the heartbreaking holiday through the eyes of a very different protagonist and the story unfolds from there.”
You can watch the full panel about The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes in the video above.
