Total Film has revealed a new still of Lucy Gray Baird in The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, along with an excerpt from an interview with Francis Lawrence, available in their November issue, which hits newsstands on Thursday, October 12.
"We start in a very different place with Snow," director Francis Lawrence tells Total Film magazine"We see a young man who’s struggling, and who’s part of a family that’s lost their fortune. He’s putting on an act that he still has money, still has status. He also starts in a much more positive place than you would imagine. It’s part of what’s fun about the story, that you see him break bad."
The new prequel takes place 64 years before The Hunger Games as we meet an 18-year-old Snow (Tom Blyth) as he’s assigned to mentor Lucy Gray Baird (Rachel Zegler) for the 10th annual Hunger Games.
The future tyrannical president is initially alarmed, given that Lucy is a tribute from impoverished District 12. But when she defiantly sings during the reaping ceremony, he spies an opportunity to turn the odds in their favour – her by surviving the deadly combat, and him by growing the Games from their grubby gladiatorial roots into a show-stopping event full of theatre and spectacle.
The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes opens in cinemas on November 17.