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Calling All Tributes! Lionsgate Drops New ‘Hunger Games' Prequel Trailer

Let the games begin

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Welcome back to Panem, Hunger Games fans!

Nearly five months after dropping the first teaser, Lionsgate released an intense new trailer for the upcoming prequel film, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, starring Tom Blyth as 18-year-old Coriolanus Snow and Rachel Zegler as District 12 tribute Lucy Gray Baird. Directed by Francis Lawrence, the adaptation of Suzanne Collins's novel will follow a different group of tributes at the tenth annual Hunger Games. And fortunately for fans, the movie will hit theaters on November 17.

In case you need a refresher, the original Hunger Games trilogy revolves around Katniss Everdeen, a District 12 tribute who competes in the 74th Hunger Games and sparks a rebellion against the corrupt Capitol. The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, however, is set 64 years before these events, when a much younger Coriolanus is tasked with mentoring Lucy Gray in the tenth annual Hunger Games.

In the trailer, which opens with a familiar ballad, there are several clips of the televised spectacle, and quite a few Easter eggs that fans will recognize, from Coriolanus's signature white rose to Sutherland's famous phrase, "It's the things we love most that destroy us." (If you recall, President Snow said this exact line to Katniss in Mockingjay Part 2.) The three-minute promo also features Viola Davis as head game maker Volumnia Gaul and Peter Dinklage as Casca Highbottom, the school dean.

hunger games prequel peter
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While speaking with Entertainment Weekly about the talented cast, director Francis Lawrence said, "Some of Peter's scenes are some of my favorites in the movie. I wanted to work with him for so long. He came in and blew everybody away."

Meanwhile, he described Davis's Volumnia as "a very strong believer in a specific philosophy." He said, "She finds strange joy and creativity in her job as a game maker. She's a creative person with a very sinister underpinning, so there's a lot of color in her wardrobe and in her hair, even her eyes, and also in her creation… She's truly the first real game maker to think outside the box."

November 17 can't come fast enough.

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