The Hunger Games' prequel movie The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is building its cast with the addition of Tom Blyth as a young President Snow. The film franchise based on Suzanne Collins' novel trilogy first launched in 2012 with Jennifer Lawrence leading the cast as heroine Katniss Everdeen as her life is upended when she enters the titular survival competition and becomes the symbol of a revolution against the dystopian government rulers. Though critical reaction varied across the four films, The Hunger Games franchise was a mammoth success for Lionsgate, having grossed over $2.97 billion against its combined $495 million budget.
After initially concluding with The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 2, Lionsgate sought to revive the franchise with a spinoff, eventually getting in touch with Suzanne Collins to adapt the prequel novel The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. The studio officially ordered the movie adaptation in early 2020 with Oscar winner Michael Arndt attached to write the script on a story adaptation from Collins and primary Hunger Games director Francis Lawrence set to direct. With production eyeing a mid-2022 start date and a November 2023 release, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes has just taken its major first steps in development.
Over two years after development was first announced on the film, Lionsgate has announced the first cast member for their The Hunger Games prequel movie, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. Tom Blyth, the star of Epix's Billy the Kid series, is set to star in the film as a younger version of President Coriolanus Snow. See Francis Lawrence's statement regarding Blyth's casting below:
"Coriolanus Snow is many things — a survivor, a loyal friend, a cutthroat, a kid quick to fall in love, and a young man ambitious to his core. Tom's take on the character showed us all the complex ambiguities of this young man as he transforms into the tyrant he would become."
Though having got his start as a child actor with Ridley Scott's Robin Hood movie, Blyth has enjoyed a stead rise in stardom in recent years with his roles in the upcoming biographical drama Benediction, the HBO period drama The Gilded Age and as the outlaw Billy the Kid in Epix's eponymous Western series. Snow was first portrayed by Donald Sutherland in the original Hunger Games movies and served as the main antagonist of the franchise, situated as the autocratic ruler of the dystopian future who seeks to shut the rebellion down with an iron hand. Snow would meet his end in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 when Katniss uses his public execution to instead kill Julianne Moore's President Coin, resulting in his death at the hands of a lynch mob.
Blyth's casting as a young President Snow for The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes marks a promising step forward for the Hunger Games prequel movie and its goals to meet a 2023 release date. With the film's main star now set and a director and script already complete, it seems likely that further details regarding other cast members is sure to roll out in the coming weeks while a production start date is sure to also be announced shortly. In the meantime, audiences can catch up with the entire original Hunger Games movie streaming on Epix now.
Source: Lionsgate