‘The Hunger Games’ Starts Fresh, without Katniss, in ‘The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes’ 

Tom Blyth, and Rachel Zegler pose for photographers upon arrival at the World premiere of the film "The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes" on Thursday, Nov. 9, 2023 in London. (AP)
Tom Blyth, and Rachel Zegler pose for photographers upon arrival at the World premiere of the film "The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes" on Thursday, Nov. 9, 2023 in London. (AP)
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‘The Hunger Games’ Starts Fresh, without Katniss, in ‘The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes’ 

Tom Blyth, and Rachel Zegler pose for photographers upon arrival at the World premiere of the film "The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes" on Thursday, Nov. 9, 2023 in London. (AP)
Tom Blyth, and Rachel Zegler pose for photographers upon arrival at the World premiere of the film "The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes" on Thursday, Nov. 9, 2023 in London. (AP)

Everyone had resigned themselves to the fact that “The Hunger Games” ended in 2015. The four-film blockbuster franchise had made nearly $3 billion at the global box office and helped Jennifer Lawrence skyrocket to superstardom. But Suzanne Collins’ Katniss Everdeen saga was over. And, frankly, everyone, including Collins, director Francis Lawrence and producer Nina Jacobson, was eager to take a break and do something else.

For several years after “Mockingjay — Part 2,” “Hunger Games”-related text conversations between Lawrence and Collins rarely went past sending one another screenshots of their films on Jeopardy categories. Then, in 2019, Jacobson and Lawrence got a call: Collins was putting the finishing touches on something new, a prequel set 64-years before Katniss volunteered as tribute. It would be focused on a young Coriolanus Snow, and there would be a big musical element.

“The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes” arrives in theaters nationwide Friday at another transitional moment in Hollywood, where Marvel movies are no longer sure things and, for the first time in a long time, the biggest movies of the year aren’t already franchises.

And while the team was excited about the possibility of working together again, there were some nerves about whether or not there was an appetite for Hunger Games movies “without Katniss,” Lawrence told The Associated Press in a recent interview. But this was all before they’d laid eyes on the book.

Both Lawrence and Jacobson were soon brought into Collins’ agent’s office, seated in a locked room and given the book to read. To their relief, suddenly the Katniss problem didn’t seem so important anymore, and soon they were off to Lionsgate to get it off the ground.

“We were excited to be able to dive into something that didn’t feel like a rehash,” Jacobson said. “It didn’t feel like we were trying to imitate the previous movies.”

For Lawrence, it “felt like a ‘Hunger Games’ story” but also something unique, “with new thematic foundations.”

“Instead of a girls’ survival story, it was a young man’s descent into darkness,” Lawrence said. “It’s an origin story about a major character and also the series itself.”

As with the first film, Lawrence and Jacobson wanted to find fresh young talents to lead the franchise – not a TikTok star or someone already famous in another part of the world – and surround them with veteran actors. In this case, those established names would include Viola Davis, Peter Dinklage and Jason Schwartzman.

They found their young Snow, played in the original films by Donald Sutherland, via taped submission. The English actor Tom Blyth entered the running rather late and quickly became the frontrunner, beating out hundreds for the role.

“He just blew everybody out of the water,” Lawrence said. “He has a charisma, he has the right physical attributes. He’s Juilliard trained. He really knows his craft. He was going to be able to give us all the emotional values we need for the character’s journey. And he felt like a star.”

For Lucy Gray Baird, the District 12 tribute Snow is assigned to mentor for the 10th Hunger Games, Lawrence already had someone in mind. Like many film fans, he was transfixed by Rachel Zegler ’s film debut as Maria in Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story” and persuaded her to co-star. It wasn’t a hard sell: “The Hunger Games” were already a big part of Zegler’s life having grown up with the books and the movies, which she and her mom and sister made events out of.

“As somebody who loves to call herself a fan first before anything else, the greatest gift you can get is more to the story,” Zegler said. “Rather than seeing it as a pressure cooker just waiting to explode, I see it as a really big blessing.”

Blyth, in his first starring role in Hollywood, felt some pressure. But he found comfort in the material they were working with.

“We’re lucky to be adapting a book that’s really good,” Blyth said. “Suzanne writes these big thinking pieces that are approachable for teenagers and younger people, which I think is a genuinely honorable feat — someone who wants to try and bring bigger ideas to young people while also entertaining them.”

Filming took place largely in Germany. The production looked to reconstruction-era Berlin for aesthetic and thematic inspiration for this post-war capitol that’s rebuilding and on tenuous political ground. And Trish Summerville was also brought back to design the ornate costumes, which include some Easter eggs for fans hidden in Lucy’s hand-painted corset.

“There’s this spectacle to the whole world,” Blyth said. “The whole thing is about spectacle. It’s about being distracted by beautiful things while everything else is going on.”

But even while creating a new world, the filmmakers were disciplined about the budget. Instead of resting on laurels and precedent – “Mockingjay Part 2” had a $160 million price tag – they kept theirs to a reported $100 million.

“We were very mindful that this was not a sequel but a prequel with a new cast,” Jacobson said. “We wanted to make sure that we were making this movie at a price that that made sense.”

It’s easy to forget that not everyone in Hollywood thought that they had a blockbuster in their hands at the beginning. Back in 2009, when Jacobson and her production company ColorForce acquired the rights to adapt Collins’ YA series, there was widespread skepticism about young adult material and about the appeal of female-fronted action movies that weren’t primarily romances.

“In the original series, we were able to take a lot of risks and really challenge a lot of industry assumptions,” Jacobson said. “The most important thing in this go-around was to still take those risks and not be playing it safe — to still feel like we’re making something that’s a bit on the subversive side.”

With its moral ambiguity and complicated characters, Jacobson thinks it might even be the kind of movie that audiences want to discuss and debate afterward. In the past year, she added, a lot of young people have discovered the franchise on streaming who will hopefully join established fans at the theater for “The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes.”

“I’m hopeful that it will be a shared cultural experience and a communal experience at a time when we don’t have too many of those,” Jacobson said. “When they do happen, as they have this year with movies as different as ‘Barbie’ and ‘Oppenheimer,’ it certainly shows that if you give people a worthwhile and original story with some bold storytelling and a filmmaker with a voice, that they will show up. And we hope to be part of that showing up.”



Gl-icked? Movie Theaters Pin Hopes on Big 'Wicked,' 'Gladiator' Weekend

'Gladiator II' has benefited from a long, expensive marketing campaign. Chris DELMAS / AFP
'Gladiator II' has benefited from a long, expensive marketing campaign. Chris DELMAS / AFP
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Gl-icked? Movie Theaters Pin Hopes on Big 'Wicked,' 'Gladiator' Weekend

'Gladiator II' has benefited from a long, expensive marketing campaign. Chris DELMAS / AFP
'Gladiator II' has benefited from a long, expensive marketing campaign. Chris DELMAS / AFP

US movie theaters are hoping the lightning-in-a-bottle magic of last year's "Barbenheimer" phenomenon can strike again this weekend, with the simultaneous release of two of 2024's most hyped films: "Wicked" and "Gladiator II."
"Wicked" is the movie adaptation of the hit Broadway musical, starring pop sensation Ariana Grande, while "Gladiator II" marks Ridley Scott's return to ancient Rome, 24 years after his epic original won the best picture Oscar.
Whether audiences will embrace the tongue-in-cheek "Glicked" (or "Wickiator") memes being hopefully circulated by marketing departments -- or even dress up in witch hats and togas -- remains to be seen.
But cinema lobbies and shopping malls across the country are being daubed in the pink-and-green shades of the "Wicked" witches, and kitted out with cardboard miniature Colosseums, ahead of a period that analysts say will be crucial for the industry, AFP said.
"I am certain that this is going to be the biggest Thanksgiving the industry has ever seen," said Jordan Hohman, an executive at Phoenix Theatres.
"Wicked" alone is "the biggest opening film in terms of advance sale tickets" in the US chain's 24-year history, currently pacing 63 percent ahead of "Barbie," added president Cory Jacobson.
While rival Hollywood studios have traditionally been wary of launching two major films on the same weekend, the record-breaking summer of 2023 showed it can be mutually beneficial -- with the right movies.
Like "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer," the female-skewing "Wicked" and male-focussed "Gladiator II" are "oriented to different audiences," said analyst David A. Gross, of Franchise Entertainment Research.
"Wicked" has inspired promotional tie-ins like a makeup line and a cupcake kit, while "Gladiator" ads have been ubiquitous during NFL telecasts.
"There is zero issue in terms of stepping on each other's feet," said Gross.
Still, matching the heady heights of "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer" will be a tough ask. Those films took $245 million combined on their opening weekend in North America alone.
"Barbenheimer was an example of two films massively over-performing... an unexpected best-case scenario," cautioned Daniel Lora, senior VP of content strategy for Boxoffice Media.
But part of the industry's current bullishness comes from another massive film, Disney's "Moana 2," which will join "Wicked" and "Gladiator II" in multiplexes just a week later.
"I don't think this is a two-picture experience. I think it's a three-picture experience," said Jacobson.
Marketing blitz
Should the next few weeks live up to hopes, it will come at a much-needed time for Hollywood.
Despite a profitable summer featuring hit sequels like "Inside Out 2" and "Deadpool & Wolverine," 2024 has been a mixed bag for an industry still dreaming of a return to pre-pandemic numbers.
The first five months of the year were hampered by a thin release schedule, stemming from the production delays caused by Hollywood strikes and Covid.
The fall has also been a disappointment, with box office dud "Joker: Folie A Deux" foremost among a series of flops and middling releases.
But the early signs for this weekend look promising.
"Gladiator II" opened in dozens of other countries last week, taking a whopping $87 million overseas. Paramount will be hoping for similar numbers in the US this weekend.
"Wicked," from Universal, the studio behind "Oppenheimer," is predicted to take north of $100 million this weekend in North America alone.
Both movies have benefited from long, expensive marketing campaigns.
At a major Las Vegas movie theater convention in April, Paramount began their annual presentation with an executive riding into the Caesars Palace arena on a chariot flanked by Roman soldiers.
Universal's presentation ended with thousands of plastic flowers held aloft by audience members to create a giant green-and-pink "Wicked" themed electronic lightshow.
Eight months later, both studios will learn if those strategies have converted into ticket sales.
"When something really catches fire, and it's not just a marketing campaign flogging it, honestly it can just take off and go higher than anybody can predict," said Gross.
"So let's see what happens."