Posted in: Lionsgate, Movies | Tagged: lionsgate, The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, the hunger games, The Hunger Games: The Ballad Of Songbirds & Snakes

The Ballad Of Songbirds & Snakes: Trickiest Thing Was Humanizing Snow

The Hunger Games: The Ballad Of Songbirds & Snakes director Francis Lawrence says that trying to humanize Coriolanus Snow was the "trickiest thing."

When it was first announced that the prequel book for The Hunger Games would focus on a young President Snow, everyone rolled their eyes a little because they could not fathom how or why something like that would work out. However, when the book The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes came out, everyone enjoyed it. Was it just good timing that it was the end of 2020, and we were all looking for reminders of the books that brought us joy when we were younger? Either way, everyone seemed to enjoy the book, and Lionsgate quickly picked up the film rights. Now, we are heading into the final months before the release date for The Hunger Games: The Ballad Of Songbirds & Snakes, and everyone is starting to talk about the film. Director Francis Lawrence spoke to Empire about how creating empathy for Coriolanus Snow in this film would be a challenge for everyone involved with the production.

"To tell a story about, and to create empathy for, a young man who's going to become the villain of the other books and movies was a really interesting challenge," Lawrence explains. "How do we make this person that's going to be the antagonist of our story the protagonist of our story? How can we get audiences behind him in his struggle and see him change and be groomed and turned into the Snow of the later series?"

Lawrence elaborated that he ran into a similar problem with The Ballad Of Songbirds & Snakes as they did for The Hunger Games regarding character development. For the first set of films, it was the fact that the books were written in first person, so we only had Katniss, and while her POV was sometimes more limited, we understood what she was doing and her thought process while she was doing. While The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is not written in first person, it does contain the internal monologue of the characters, which, for a complicated character like Coriolanus, can help us understand him better. In film, unless you want a narrator explaining everything to you, you have to find other ways to show, not tell the audience, the different attributes of the characters.

"It was really fun to go back to the formation of him and to humanize him on screen," Lawrence says. "It was probably the trickiest thing, even from a scripting stage. Because in a book, you can hear a lot of characters' inner thoughts. Our primary objective was to get an audience behind him, but we also had to lay the breadcrumbs so that when the turn happens, it's believable."

The inability to translate complicated characters from page to screen without any internal monologue to help the audience along is something that most adaptations run into. The Hunger Games expanded on the books a lot by seeing the world through the eyes of people who aren't Katniss, and it seemed to resonate with the fans. The Ballad Of Songbirds & Snakes has its own hurdles to climb, and it'll be interesting to see the reception of this one not only by the fans but also by the general public and critics.

The Hunger Games: The Ballad Of Songbirds & Snakes – Summary, Cast List, Release Date

Experience the story of The Hunger Games — 64 years before Katniss Everdeen volunteered as tribute and decades before Coriolanus Snow became the tyrannical President of Panem.

The Hunger Games: The Ballad Of Songbirds & Snakes follows a young Coriolanus (Tom Blyth) who is the last hope for his failing lineage, the once-proud Snow family that has fallen from grace in a post-war Capitol. With his livelihood threatened, Snow is reluctantly assigned to mentor Lucy Gray Baird (Rachel Zegler), a tribute from the impoverished District 12. But after Lucy Gray's charm captivates the audience of Panem, Snow sees an opportunity to shift their fates. With everything he has worked for hanging in the balance, Snow unites with Lucy Gray to turn the odds in their favor. Battling his instincts for both good and evil, Snow sets out on a race against time to survive and reveal if he will ultimately become a songbird or a snake.

The Hunger Games: The Ballad Of Songbirds & Snakes is directed by Francis Lawrence and stars Tom Blyth, Rachel Zegler, Peter Dinklage, Hunter Schafer, Josh Andrés Rivera, Jason Schwartzman, and Viola Davis. It is based on a novel of the same name by Suzanne Collins and a screenplay by Michael Lesslie and Michael Arndt. It will be released on November 17th.

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!

Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!