Rachel Zegler is fighting for her life…
Lionsgate has unveiled a new trailer for its The Hunger Games prequel The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, which teases the 22-year-old half-Colombian American Golden Globe-winning actress/singer’s fight for survival in the arena.
The West Side Story actress stars as Lucy Gray Baird, the female District 12 tribute to the 10th Hunger Games, in the new film based on the books by Suzanne Collins, which launches in theaters November 17th.
Starring alongside Zegler is Tom Blyth, who portrays Coriolanus Snow, Baird’s mentor in this game of survival who finds himself torn between his duties to the Capitol and Head Gamemaker Dr. Volumnia Gaul (Viola Davis) and burgeoning feelings for his mentee.
It’s the annual reaping ceremony of the 10th annual games, set 64 years before the first film. Lucy represents impoverished District 12 and 18-year-old Coriolanus Snow is her unwilling — at first — mentor. He’s much more conflicted in his views in this film, decades before he becomes Panem’s tyrannical president. “There have been some changes this year,” he is told. “Your role is to turn these children into spectacles, not survivors.”
But after Lucy commands all 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 ultimately will reveal who is a songbird and who is a snake.
Like the previous films, themes here are freedom and tyranny, good and evil, how both can co-exist and why people chose one over the other. “There is natural goodness built into all a us. We can step across that line into evil — or not,” says Lucy. Panem is full of cranes and construction — rebuilding a decade after a brutal civil war.
The prequel in the $3 billion-grossing global franchise will hit theaters around the world on November 17. Hunger Games franchise sequel producer Francis Lawrence directed and also will produce with the series producers Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson.