Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes is a more political Hunger Games—here’s why

The Hunger Games movies turned Jennifer Lawrence into a certified A-lister and ended Hollywood’s YA adaptation boom with a grace note to the tune of $3 billion worldwide. Nina Jacobson, a long-time producer of the franchise, says it was never a real possibility that Lionsgate could turn quickly to reboots and spin-offs in order to satisfy Hunger Games fans.

“You could have gone with a fan favorite — Let’s do Haymitch’s story! Or do Finnick’s games! — but that would be doing it to do it,” Jacobson tells Polygon. “If [Collins]If she had something in the story that was interesting to her, or something to discuss, it would be great. But if not, better to leave a franchise as something people feel fondly about rather than crank out a sequel for the sake of a sequel.”

What Jacobson The following are some of the ways to improve your own ability.n’t realize as she put Hunger Games behind her was that Collins didAnother story: A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. A prequel set 64 years before the events of the original story, Collins’ Songbirds & SnakesLucy Gray Baird, a District 12 newcomer is introduced. Set amid a nascent, janky version of the Hunger Games, the novel has a familiar narrator: a young version of future Panem president Coriolanus Snow, Katniss Everdeen’s chief antagonist in the original Hunger Games trilogy.

Jacobson and Collins never spoke. Songbirds and SnakesAfter reading the 517 pages of the gruesome odyssey she was certain that the franchise would continue. The film adaptation will be released on Nov. 17.

“Suzanne, the originator and North Star of everything that we try to do with these books, she doesn’t write just to make money,” Jacobson says. “She writes when she has something to say.”

The big questions at the heart of Songbirds & Snakes

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What Collins has to say gets right into authoritarianism and social-contract-theory debate by way of Hunger Games mythology. It’s heady, but in a sea of shallow, toyetic blockbuster thrill rides, it’s an exciting prospect for Jacobson, who talked at length with Collins about Enlightenment thinkers like John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau as she devised a modern cinematic spectacle that could still have a philosophical heart.

“Are we fundamentally good if left to our own devices? Are we fundamentally bad and need the state to keep us in check or we’ll destroy each other? It felt like these ideas, about the way people see each other, or government officials, and then what they want based on that perception, were so timely. And to do it through Coriolanus Snow, somebody we’ve all spent the last four movies hating, felt like a particularly interesting and original approach,” she says.

The Ballad of Songbirds & SnakesThe argument is strong on paper and it’s worth a try in the current market. Jacobson admits the “original movies are very political, but they aren’t partisan or polarizing as far as our domestic politics [go].” Songbirds & SnakesOn the other hand may feel more pointed in response to the ideological “roller coaster of the last decade.” And if the prospect of becoming culture-war cannon fodder wasn’t enough, there’s the prequel factor: The jump to Hunger Games’ past arrives after mixed reactions and cool box-office receipts to theoretical sure things like the Hobbit movie trilogy, X-Men prequels, and the proposed-as-a-Potter-pentalogy Fantastic Beasts series.

What’s the takeaway for a movie producer looking to make a prequel successful where so many others have struggled? Jacobson says that her formula is quite simple. Adapt a real book and recruit a crew well-versed with the materials to create a period film.

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Joining Jacobson on her quest to do right by Collins’ novel are director Francis Lawrence, who helmed Catching FireThe Mockingjay film series includes both films. Catching FireMichael Arndt and Michael Lesslie, a playwright/screenwriter (The Little Drummer Girl) to adapt the book; cinematographer Jo Willems, who shot all of Lawrence’s Hunger Games installments; and James Newton Howard, who has composed all of the series’ scores since the 2012 original. They worked together to reverse the process, beginning with the world-building and visual elements in the first Hunger Games.

Capitol Hill in The Ballad of Songbirds & SnakesIt is a world away from the high-society ostentation of previous movies. The Capitol has been ruling with a iron fist for ten years, ten years after the revolt that led to the Hunger Games. Panem’s power players are in trouble. Jacobson uses this example to show the contrast between Weimar Germany and Jacobson’s era. Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes crew recruited German production designer Uli Hanisch (Babylon Berlin, Cloud AtlasThey shot on real locations around the globe to bring a spirit of the past into an even darker moment in The Hunger Games timeline. To bring the spirit of the old to a dark moment in the Hunger Games timeline, they shot at real locations all over the world. The producer says parts of the film were shot in Berlin’s Olympiastadion, the stadium where Jesse Owens famously won four gold medals in 1936, and the Centennial Hall in Poland, places that “make the humans feel small by design, relative to the architecture.”

Inside and Outside the Hunger Games, meet the fighters

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Coriolanus is left with nothing and struggling to appear respectable in the turbulent postwar Panem. The only place where a respected mentor, scion and son of an influential family could have such a lavish apartment with only gruel is in Capitol. Jacobson says the movie opens on an image from when Coriolanus is a child “and people are literally starving and doing whatever they have to to survive during war. It’s an essential part of who he is and who he becomes.”

Tom Blyth, a relative novice (BenedictionDonald Sutherland’s steely villainy in the original films was portrayed by a 19-year old version of Coriolanus. “He has enormous self-control, composure,” Jacobson says of Blyth, who not only matched the look of a young “Coryo,” but had Sutherland’s “intrinsic qualities” of being a subtle showman.

That psychological take was an important match for Rachel Zegler, whose breakout performance in Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story made her an obvious and perfect choice to play Lucy Gray, District 12’s chosen female tribute and Coriolanus’ mentee. Lucy Gray is part of the Covey group, which is made up of travelling musicians. Unlike Katniss she arrives ready to sing and perform and captures the Capitol’s attention.

Lucy’s musical background plays a major role in the The Ballad Of Songbirds And SnakesThe film will also be based on the book. Dave Cobb, a Nashville staple who’s produced for Chris Stapleton, Brandi Carlile, Sturgill Simpson, and Jason Isbell, among others, was hired early on to help translate Collins’ many lyrical moments for Lucy into mesmerizing songs performed by Zegler. And even at the scripting stage, the creative team was doing their own homework, mainlining Ken Burns’ 16-hour doc series Country MusicIntegrity is the key to the Covey.

Like the Hunger Games film series, this one is also a very entertaining movie. The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes’ two young leads are backed by a cast with a pedigree of prestige. Game of Thrones star Peter Dinklage steps in as Dean Highbottom, the ruthless head of Coriolanus’ school and a mentor to the new batch of Hunger Games mentors. Viola Davis portrays Dr. Gaul. Gaul is the chief gamemaker and mad scientist. He’s also a devout Hobbesian. Jason Schwartzman is the first Hunger Games host, Lucky Flickerman. He’s also a presumed descendant of Caesar Flickerman. And Hunter Schafer plays Tigris Snow, Coryo’s cousin and the closest person he has to a confidant.

Schafer’s involvement is particularly exciting. While the actor-model-activist’s spellbinding turn on EuphoriaThe role of Tigris is a completely different kind of flex from the high school drama. “For Hunter to represent hope and optimism about humanity, see people as human beings and not as representatives of an idea, I think that makes it a particularly interesting role for her to play,” Jacobson says of the casting. “People connect to her as a human being beyond all the vitriol and politics of this moment — people find her immensely relatable.”

Fear is not the only emotion that can be overcome by hope

The Hunger Games has a lot of star power. From veteran actors to newcomers, the success of the film may come down to how long the franchise will last and what the audiences are willing to accept as an innovative take. The studio-supported AMPTP has not yet resolved the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strike, so studio productions, as well as the new-release press, are in limbo. (On the ongoing strikes, Jacobson says, “It’s been very painful to watch. […] We’re going through a time of structural change, and we all need each other to get through it. We’re in this kind of civil war when the changes in the business are the bigger adversary.”)

Most major movie franchises are not like this. The Ballad of Songbirds & SnakesIt’s a one-off. It’s not intended as a trilogy-starter or continuity revival, Jacobson says. While it’s easy to imagine Collins’ book being broken into a series of films, given its scope and segmentation, Lawrence, Arndt, and Lesslie fit the full structure into one movie. The producer remains hopeful about future special movies. “Do I think she will write more books in the world? Do I think she’ll write more books? Do I have any idea what they’ll be? Not really!”)

What is your best guess? The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes enters the arena this November, bowing in a moment of turbulence and without the typical PR blitz, it’ll basically be resting on its laurels. Luckily, according to Jacobson, Collins’ novel offered plenty to bite on. The Hunger Games creative crew bit.

“When you are living in a polarizing time, it is so much easier to assume difference is hostility and demonize the other,” she says. “This [story] is about finding connections, and finding out that you might have enormous connections to the last person in the world that you think you’d have anything in common with.”

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & SnakesArrives in cinemas Nov. 14,