The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes Prequel Movie to Release in November 2023

After earning billions with four movies revolving around Suzanne Collins’ novel series, Lionsgate announced that The Hunger Games will return with a prequel movie, which will release next year.

The studio announced the project titled “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” during its presentation at CinemaCon 2022, where Lionsgate also revealed footage for John Wick: Chapter 4, The Expend4bles and more.

The movie is based on the prequel novel by Collins, which released in 2020. It revolves around a young Coriolanus Snow, the tyrannical autocrat of Panem, who was played in the original movies by Donald Sutherland.

The story showcases Snow during the 10th Hunger Games, when he is selected as the mentor figure for District 12 tribute, Lucy Gray Baird, who faced the Capitol’s ire after singing during the reaping. The book and the upcoming adaptation will see Snow before his rise to power, and it won’t feature Jennifer Lawrence’s Katniss Everdeen, Liam Hemsworth’s Gale Hawthorne and Josh Hutcherson’s Peeta Mellark.

Lionsgate revealed that the the film will release on November 17, 2023 with a teaser trailer, which featured some writing that stated:

Other than that however, the teaser shared no other information, with no details about the movie’s cast. However, the film will be directed by Francis Lawrence, who helmed The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and Part 1 and Part 2 of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay. Along with that, Michael Arndt who wrote Catching Fire will also be making a return for screenplay duties.

With the movie set to release in less than 18 months, fans are excited to see how the prequel shapes up to be, compared to the original, and they can’t wait to see what the studio has in store.