Welcome back to Panem! “The Hunger Games” franchise is officially revived with the release of “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes,” a prequel film set many years before the rise of Katniss Everdeen.
Based on the Suzanne Collins novel of the same name, the prequel centers on a young Coriolanus Snow as his experience mentoring District 12 tribute Lucy Gray Baird in the 10th Hunger Games shapes him into the villain fans of the franchise know well.
The original “Hunger Games” movies – “The Hunger Games” (2012), “Catching Fire” (2013), “Mockingjay – Part 1” (2014) and “Mockingjay – Part 2” (2015) – made global stars out of its cast, most notably Jennifer Lawrence. She was joined by the likes of Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson, Elizabeth Banks, Lenny Kravitz, Stanley Tucci and Donald Sutherland. Similar to that ensemble, the prequel cast includes a mix of heavyweight actors such as Viola Davis and Peter Dinklage, rising stars like Rachel Zegler and Hunter Schafer and newcomers set to break big like Tom Blyth and Josh Andrés Rivera.
With “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” set to conquer the box office this holiday movie season, check out a rundown of the cast and the main characters below.
Tom Blyth as Coriolanus ‘Coryo’ Snow
“Hunger Games” fans know Coriolanus Snow as the viscous and diabolical president of Panem (played by Donald Sutherland in the original four movies), but in “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes,” he is a young man being slowly corrupted by government forces. A war has left his family in financial ruin, which makes the prospect of winning the 10th Hunger Games enticing. He becomes a mentor to Lucy Gray Baird and their relationship complicates his plan.
Snow in “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” is played by English actor Tom Blyth, best known until now for roles in films such as “Scott and Sid” (2018) and “Benediction”(2021). He also plays the title character in Epix’s Western series “Billy the Kid,” which is currently airing its second season.
“It’s very easy to kind of paint [Snow] as the baddie because he definitely is — I mean baddie in the bad way, not the good way — not the Instagram baddie, he’s a real baddie with a capital B,” Blyth told Variety at the film’s London premiere. “But I think for me, the exciting part is getting to answer those questions that I think we all had when we watched the original films, which is ‘How did he get like this?’ And maybe look at his humanity and dig into it a little bit.”
Lucy Gray Baird is the female tribute from District 12 in the 10th Hunger Games. She is a member of a traveling musician group known as the Covey, and her blossoming connection to mentor Coriolanus Snow complicates her time in the games. She is a singer who is the original writer of “The Hanging Tree” within the franchise’s universe.
“We channeled a bunch of people: Patsy Cline and Dolly Parton and Joan Baez, to name a few,” Zegler toldVariety at the film’s premiere about constructing her character. “That was really the voice that we were trying to find. But getting to sing live is my bread and butter, that’s what I’ve been doing my whole life and so it was really nice to get to bring that skill to my peers on set.”
Zegler is best known for her starring role as Maria in Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story,” which won her a Golden Globe for best actress in a motion picture musical or comedy. She had a supporting role earlier this year in Warner Bros. comic book tentpole “Shazam! Fury of the Gods,” and she’s starring in the title role of Disney’s 2025 live-action “Snow White” movie.
Read more:
https://variety.com/lists/hunger-games-prequel-cast-ballad-of-songbirds-and-snakes/tom-blyth-coriolanus-snow/
— Variety