‘Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes’ Clip Remembers Why the Hunger Games Began

The much-anticipated prequel of Francis Lawrence and Gary Ross’s The Hunger Games series, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes has dropped a quirky new Capitol-News clip featuring Lucky Flickerman (played by Jason Schwartzman) as he “patches up the hole” and reflects on why the Hunger Games actually began. Lucky Flickerman, who is an ancestor of Caesar Flickerman (played by Stanley Tucci) in the initial four installments of the franchise, makes an announcement to the people of Panem that is synonymous with controlling the narrative and justifies that there is a price to be paid for the rebellion that was launched against the Capitol 10 years ago.

In The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes’ official trailer releases, we’ve seen that things are not looking good for the charming and naive Coriolanus Snow, played by Tom Blyth. He doesn’t want to challenge the Panem’s establishment but he also has a soft corner for one of the tributes — Lucy Gray Baird from District 12, played by Rachel Zegler — the songbird who has a knack for making beautiful symphonies and the one who lays the foundation for Katniss Everdeen-led rebellion 64 years later.

Lucky Flickerman’s News Report Subtly Reflects That The History Repeats Itself

“Are you, are you, coming to the tree?” — the second trailer of The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes begins with Lucy Gray Baird’s iconic rebellion song, “The Hanging Tree,” which the audiences have already heard in the original The Hunger Games series. This exact song will actually be sung for the first time by Lucy Gray Baird, during the 10th Annual Hunger Games, and will become the very foundation for the rebellion that takes place 64 years in the future. So while apparently, the Hunger Games exist as a “price for peace” (as Lucky Flickerman puts it) against the rebels, the districts are still eventually going to end up repeating the exact same thing that happened initially, the rebellion against tyranny. Interestingly, Katniss Everdeen (played by Jennifer Lawrence) in the initial installments of the franchise, is also almost a character replica of Lucy Gray Baird.

So while the tributes are all in and ready to be sacrificed for the sake of a spectacle by the Capitol in The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, the young Snow will be constantly pulled between his feelings for Lucy and being compelled to broaden the appeal of the spectacle by charming her and making her fall for him, as instructed to him by Dr. Volumnia Gaul (played by Viola Davis), showrunner for the 10th Annual Hunger Games herself. Possibly turning Snow into a snake in the process and laying the foundation for the tyrannical President Snow over half a century later.

Lionsgate Films is set to release The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes on November 17, 2023. Check out the special feature of Capitol News below.