Helen Lee-Kim, President of Lionsgate International, opened the 2023 CineEurope with a presentation about upcoming films Monday in Barcelona. One of Lionsgate’s most popular franchises of $3 billion is releasing another movie, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes. Lee-Kim was joined by Color Force producer Nina Jacobson to discuss the film on stage. Jacobson stated that the movie, based on Suzanne Collins’ novels, will not be a replica of the previous Hunger Games movies.

“It’s a new story, with new ground and new characters. We were able to create a completely different visual language…one that is still recognizably Panem, but also different and fresh.”

Footage from behind-the-scenes shows that the film takes place 64 years before the first Hunger Games movie. The new cast includes Rachel Zegler (Lucy Gray Baird), Tom Blyth (Coriolanus Snow), Viola Davis (Dr. Volumnia Gaul), Jason Schwartzman (Lucky Flickerman), Peter Dinklage (Casca Highbottom), Hunter Schafer (Tigris Snow), and Josh Andres Rivera (Sejanus Plinth). Jacobson said Blyth and Zegler were perfect for the role.

“He stole the part, and it was game over.” “You could just see it, the way he was watching her and the way she was singing. It was perfect.”

In the film, Coriolanus Snow is 18 years old and the sole surviving inheritor of his family’s wealth after a devastating war in the Capitol. Snow is tasked to mentor an impoverished tribute from District 12, Lucy Gray Baird, who opposes the violent games hosted by the authorities. After befriending each other, Snow and Gray unite to survive and discover their purposes in the hunger games.

Director Francis Lawrence describes the film as “a duality of spirits; light and dark, good and evil, joy and sorrow- it’s inside all of us…We are all songbirds, and we’re all snakes, but can we find a connection with the people around us? That’s the question.”