Trish Summerville and Jo Willems Are Back As Costume Designer And Director of Photography for The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

Trish Summerville, genius costume designer for Catching Fire is back for The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes according to producer Nina Jacobson! Nina tweeted a reply confirming the news to a fan on twitter that asked who was designing costumes for Ballad.

Jo Willems

Nina also confirmed via twitter that Jo Willems is also back as Director of Photography. Jo worked on Catching Fire, both Mockingjay films and also did Red Sparrow with Francis Lawrence plus a lot of other things you may have seen (Hard Candy, American Gods). 

Uli Hanisch

According to Nina, the new addition to the team is production designer Uli Hanisch who is probably best known for his gorgeous work on The Queen's Gambit, for which he won an Emmy. 

Dream team activated! 

Our First Official Look at Tom Blyth and Rachel Zegler as Coriolanus Snow and Lucy Gray Baird In The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

Image via Vanity Fair. Click for full size 

Vanity Fair has our first official look at Tom Blyth and Rachel Zegler as Coriolanus Snow and Lucy Gray Baird in The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes! In addition to the photo we get some excellent insight into the new film and how the production design will differ from the original films. It's a whole new world!

Speaking to Vanity Fair, director Francis Lawrence said, "This is very much a story about love. It’s this kind of love story set in a different kind of a world in a different time,” he adds. “A very intimate love story.” 

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“He is a young man finding his way in the world, but he also makes choices that presage the man he is becoming,” producer Nina Jacobson says. Over the course of the film, he’ll find himself caught between two forces of nature: the charming Lucy Gray Baird (Rachel Zegler) and the villainous Dr. Volumnia Gaul (Viola Davis). “He is a shapeshifter who craves control, but is drawn to a woman who threatens everything he thought he wanted.”

That woman, Lucy Gray, adds a soft touch to the franchise’s brutal world. Much like Hunger Games heroine Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence in the original films), she’s a tribute from District 12. Unlike Katniss, Lucy Gray hails from a group known for their close-knit, musical culture. (“It’s thrilling to hear Rachel sing,” Jacobson says.) Her relationship with Snow starts in the arena—though it quickly grows beyond what the cameras see. As shown in this exclusive first image from the film, above, she calms Snow in a way that little else in his war-torn world can.

“This is not with judgment, but Lucy Gray is the anti-Katniss,” adds Francis Lawrence. “She’s a musician, she’s a performer, she’s a charmer… Snow has never met a girl like this before.”

Because this film is set decades before Katniss was born, it delves deeper into the mythology of Panem that the original films, and novels, were built upon. Snow and his contemporaries are still reckoning with the consequences of “the dark days,” the wars that led to the Hunger Games.

“It’s completely different stylistically, in terms of design, character and point of view,” says Jacobson. “To be able to show a different side of Panem at a different time in its history has been really exciting.” Lawrence teases that production designer Uli Hanisch (The Queen’s Gambit) has been working to create a “new version” of the dystopian nation, and that many aspects of it—from the architecture to interior design—reflect the broken nature of this story’s world and characters. “We also get to remake District 12, remake all of the Capitol,” he adds, “and a brand new arena.”

Of course, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes will still have callbacks aplenty. “Suzanne has done such a great job of going back into the mythology and telling a story about the creation of the world,” says Lawrence. “You get a little background of Katniss. You will obviously get a lot of the background of Snow, the history of the Games, the history of some of the music, where songs like ‘The Hanging Tree’ actually come from.”

“Returning to the world of The Hunger Games has been a coming home,” Jacobson adds—as well as a journey toward a greater understanding of the series’ chief villain.. “As much as we may hate [Snow] in the later movies,” says Lawrence, “to see that he is a real human being… there is something really satisfying about that.”

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes debuts in theaters on Nov. 17, 2023. 

Viola Davis has been cast as Dr. Gaul in 'The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes'

The rumors were swirling for months and now it’s finally official. Viola Davis has been cast as the evil Dr. Gaul in The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes!

Dr. Volumnia Gaul is the Head Gamemaker for the 10th Hunger Games, University Professor, leads classes for the 24 Hunger Games mentors at the Academy, and heads the science lab that produces muttations. She also loves animal cruelty and torture, so a real fun gal! She ends up being a huge influence on the young Coriolanus Snow, setting his course for the future. 

What happened in the arena? That’s humanity undressed. The tributes. And you, too. How quickly civilization disappears. All your fine manners, education, family background, everything you pride yourself on, stripped away in the blink of an eye, revealing everything you actually are. A boy with a club who beats another boy to death. That’s mankind in its natural state. . . .

- Dr. Volumnia Gaul

“The Hunger Games films have always been elevated by their exceptional casting, and we are thrilled to be continuing that tradition with Viola Davis as Volumnia Gaul,” said Lionsgate Motion Picture Group President, Nathan Kahane. “Her formidable and powerful presence will add layers of complexity and menace to this story.”

“Dr. Gaul is as cruel as she is creative and as fearsome as she is formidable,” said Lawrence. “Snow’s savvy as a political operator develops in no small part due to his experiences with her as the games’ most commanding figure.”

“From the beginning, Viola has been our dream for Dr. Gaul because of the finely layered intelligence and emotion she brings to every role,” added Jacobson. “A brilliant and eccentric strategist, Gaul is instrumental in shaping a young Coriolanus Snow into the man he will become. We are incredibly fortunate to have an actor with Viola’s extraordinary range and presence to play this pivotal role.”

Davis is a multi award-winning actress, known for, among many other things, The Help, Doubt, and Ma Rainey's Black Bottom  - which all earned her Oscar nominations, and Fences in which she won her first Oscar in 2017 for her role opposite Denzel Washington. She’s also won 2 Tonys, an Emmy, multiple SAG Awards, a Golden Globe and a BAFTA! Next up she’s starring in Sony’s historical epic The Woman King, which she also produced. What a powerhouse! She seems like the perfect choice to bring all kinds of interesting layers to this twisted character. I can’t wait to see what she does with the role.

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes debuts in theaters on Nov. 17, 2023. 

Arena, Hanging Tree, District 12? The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes Rumored Filming Locations

It looks like the Centennial Hall and Wroclaw Zoo in Wrocław, Poland, and Landschaftspark in Duisburg, Germany are some of the recently discovered filming locations for The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes film currently in production. 

POLAND

Centennial Hall

Some of the actors were recently spotted near Centennial Hall in Wroclaw Poland, along with shuttle vans bearing butterfly stickers in their windows (the working title for the production is Butterfly), lots of screened off areas, set lights, production trucks and trailers, some Peacekeepers in uniform and some Panem posters and symbols.

Image via @BalladofPanem on twitterImage via @BalladofPanem on twitter

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The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes Cast & Characters - A Visual Guide

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With all the casting news coming out for The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, it’s getting tough to keep track of who’s who among all the new faces - especially with the sheer number of characters in the film, and the fanciful (yet always meaningful) names Suzanne Collins uses in the book. We thought it was time for a visual guide to the characters and cast!

*There are light spoilers here for those of you who haven’t read the book.*

Mentors & Tributes 

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The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is set around the 10th Hunger Games, and was the first Hunger Games to introduce mentors for the tributes, recruiting 24 of the Capitol Academy's best and brightest seniors for the task. 

We‘ve laid out the tribute and mentor pairs to help you familiarize yourselves with who has been cast. You’ll find the Capitol mentors up top paired with their tributes from the corresponding districts below. We’ve left out tributes and mentors that haven’t been officially announced yet, so you’ll see there are some districts missing. It seems like some of the mentors and tributes that have a, shall we say, “limited” amount of time in the story will be treated more as featured extras and won't be part of an official casting announcement. 

The Covey and District 12

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Next up is the visual guide for The Covey and District 12. We’ve got the full cast for The Covey and it’s really fun to see them all together. There are so many new faces and I think they made awesome choices. I can totally imagine them playing music at The Hob.  

For background, The Covey were a group of traveling musical performers in Panem whose name means family or small flock of birds.They made their money by performing at places like The Hob. After the war, they were rounded up and forced to settle in District 12.

 

A Covey member's first name was taken from a ballad, their middle name from a color, and their last name was a family name. The one exception was Lucy Gray Baird, whose first and middle name both came from the same ballad. The three Baird girls are cousins, Clerk Carmine Clade and Billy Taupe Clade are brothers and Tam Amber is, according to Maude Ivory, “a lost soul.”

The Covey consists of 5 members:

Lucy Gray Baird (vocals, guitar) played by Rachel Zegler

Maude Ivory Baird (vocals, percussion) played by Vaughan Reilly

Barb Azure Baird (bass) played by Honor Gillies

Tam Amber (mandolin) played by Eike Onyambu

Clerk Carmine Clade (fiddle) played by Konstantin Taffet​​​​​​​

plus one ex member, Billy Taupe Clade played by Dakota Shapiro. 

The District 12 of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is similar to the place you know from The Hunger Games series - it’s a poor district, coal mining is the main industry, and there’s a brewing rebellion. There’s also a Peacekeeper base where new recruits are trained. 

District 12 book characters are: 

Mayor Lipp

Mayfair Lipp (Mayor Lipps's daughter) played by Isobel Jesper Jones

Rebels in D12:

Spruce played by George Somner

Arlo Chance played by Raphael Zari

Lil  

Peacekeepers in D12:

Commander Hoff played by Burn Gorman

Smiley played by Carl Spencer

Beanpole aka Junius played by Scott Folan

Bug

Cookie 

District 12 Peacekeepers and citizens not yet officially cast are Bug, (Snow’s bunk mate) Arlo, Lil, Cookie, and Mayor Lipp. We know Arlo and Lil are definitely a part of the production. The Hanging Tree story line and song are important parts of the book and the larger Hunger Games lore, and there were fans on site for the filming of the hanging tree scenes in Germany who saw an actor or stunt person get “hanged” over and over for hours.

The Capitol

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The Capitol we experience in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is 10 years after the first rebellion, a civil war between the Capitol and the districts. The effects of the war were still felt in the Capitol - rubble lay in piles on the sidewalks, whole buildings were still gutted, food was scarce for The Snow family and the black market was alive and well. 

The Academy was “the finest secondary school in the Capitol” educating the offspring of the prominent, wealthy and influential. Coriolanus and Tigris were able to attend due to their family’s long history at the school and prominent family name. 

The Citadel was an imposing structure which housed the Capitol's War Department. Dr. Volumnia Gaul, Head Gamemaker of the 10th Hunger Games and head of Citadel experimental weapons division, was based here. She had laboratories underground, where she bred various muttations, including snakes and rabbits.

The Capitol characters in the book consist of:

Snow Family

Coriolanus Snow played by Tom Blyth

Tigris Snow (his cousin) played by Hunter Schafer

The Grandma'am (their grandmother) played by Fionnula Flanagan

Crassus Snow (Coriolanus' father) 

Mrs. Snow (Coriolanus' mother)

Plinth Family

Sejanus Plinth (one of Coriolanus Snow’s classmates, close friends, and a reluctant mentor along side him in the Games) played by Josh Andrés Rivera. 

Strabo Plinth (Sejanus’ father, a munitions magnate from District 2 who bought his way into the Capitol) played by Michael Greco

Ma Plinth (Sejanus’ mother) played by Daniela Grubert

The Academy & The Citadel

Dr. Volumina Gaul (Head Gamemaker, instructor, head of Citadel experimental weapons division) played by Viola Davis

Dean Casca Highbottom (Dean of The Academy) played by Peter Dinklage

President Ravinstill (President Of Panem, great uncle to Felix Ravinstill, mentor)

Dr. Kay (assistant scientist in Gaul's lab)

Prof Satyria Click (Academy instructor and a mentor of Coriolanus Snow)

Prof Agrippa Sickle (Academy instructor of physical education)

Crispus Demigloss (a history professor at the Academy)

Dr. Wane (a doctor who took care of Coriolanus Snow and Clemensia Dovecote)

The Games

Lucretius “Lucky” Flickerman (Hunger Games Master of Ceremonies) played by Jason Schwartzman

Lepidus Malmsey (Capitol News reporter)

Capitol Citizens

Pluribus Bell (an old Snow family friend who runs the black market) - Producer Nina Jacobson confirmed on twitter that this character will not be in the film. 

Fabricia Whatnot (fashion designer in The Capitol, as well as Tigris's boss)

Nero Price (a neighbor of the Snows, father of Persephone Price, mentor)

Remus Dolittle (Gamemaker-in-training and a downstairs neighbor of the Snow family)

As you can see, there are quite a few minor Capitol characters yet to be officially cast. With such a character dense book, I’m sure some of the smaller characters had to be cut from the adaptation. 

We hope this helps to familiarize you with this huge cast!

  

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes debuts in theaters on Nov. 17, 2023. 

Peter Dinklage Joins 'The Hunger Games: The Ballad Of Songbirds & Snakes’ As Dean Highbottom

Peter Dinklage joins the growing cast of The Hunger Games: The Ballad Of Songbirds & Snakes as Casca Highbottom, dean of The Academy and young Coriolanus Snows’ nemesis. 

“Dean Highbottom is one of the most powerful people in Snow’s life. As the austere and vindictive face of the games, he sets the rules that will determine every aspect of Coriolanus’s fate. I’m thrilled that Peter will be bringing him to life,” said director Francis Lawrence speaking to Deadline.

Producer Nina Jacobsen added, “I cannot think of an actor more perfectly suited to inhabit the role of Highbottom,” Jacobson said. “As the man credited with conceiving the Hunger Games and the Dean of the Academy,  Casca Highbottom is a character with secrets.  Peter’s magnetism, intensity and dark humor will infuse him with the intelligence, depth and pathos that the role demands.” Amen! 

Nathan Kahane, President of Lionsgate’s Motion Picture Group weighed in, “With production underway, we couldn’t be more excited about the way this cast has come together and thrilled to be welcoming Peter Dinklage to Panem. Peter is not just a fan favorite actor who brings a commanding presence to every part he plays. He is one of the best actors alive. He will bring a formidable, charismatic authority to the important role of the dean of the Academy.”

Dean Highbottom is a complicated character in the book and a lot more interesting than he initially appears. We can’t wait to see what Dinklage brings to the character. 

James Newton Howard Returns to Score ‘The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes’

James Newton Howard announced on instagram that he will return to score The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. Howard beautifully scored the first four Hunger Games movies (three of which Francis Lawrence directed) and he also previously collaborated with Lawrence on I Am Legend, Water for Elephants, and Red Sparrow. 

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes will be released on November 17, 2023

Maude Ivory, Billy Taupe, More Tributes & Mentors Join The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes!

The latest round of tributes, mentors and Covey members cast in The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes includes Irene Boehm, Cooper Dillon, Luna Kuse, Kjell Brutscheidt, Dimitri Abold, Athena Strates, Dakota Shapiro, George Somner and Vaughan Reilly.

Boehm will play Lamina, a tribute from District 7; Dillon will play Mizzen, tribute from District 4; Kuse will play Brandy, tribute from District 10; Brutscheidt will play Tanner, tribute from District 10; Abold will play Reaper, tribute from District 11; Strates will play Persephone Price, mentor to District 4’s Mizzen; Shapiro will play Billy Taupe, rebel, troublemaker, and Lucy Gray Bairds complicated ex from the Covey; Somner will play Spruce, a rebel from District 12; and Reilly will play Maude Ivory, the youngest member of the Covey.