Lionsgate’s upcoming The Hunger Games prequel, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds, has added 11 additional actors in roles including Coriolanus’ grandmother, Peacekeepers, and nomads from District 12. The just-announced new cast members join Tom Blyth as Coriolanus Snow and Rachel Zegler as District 12’s tribute Lucy Gray Baird in the upcoming adaptation of Suzanne Collins’s novel.
Per Lionsgate: Fionnula Flanagan will play Grandma’am, Coriolanus’s strict grandmother. Characters played by Honor Gillies (Barb Azure), Eike Onyambu (Tam Amber), and Konstantin Taffet (Clerk Carmine) are all members of the Covey, a group of nomads in District 12. Isobel Jesper Jones will play Mayfair Lipp, daughter of the mayor of District 12, with Flora Li Thiemann playing Livia Cardew, mentor to a tribute from District 1. Burn Gorman (Commander Hoff), Scott Folan (Beanpole), and Carl Spencer (Smiley) will all play Peacekeepers sent by the Capitol to District 12. Rounding out the cast are Michael Greco and Daniela Grubert as Strabo Plinth and Mrs. Plinth, wealthy parents to Sejanus Plinth, Coriolanus’s best friend.
The newcomers join a cast that includes Peter Dinklage as Cesca Highbottom, the Dean of the Academy; Jerome Lance as Marcus, tribute from District 2; Ashley Liao as Clemensia Dovecote, one of Coriolanus’s closest friends and mentor to a tribute from District 11; Knox Gibson plays Bobbin, tribute from District 8; Mackenzie Lansing is Coral, tribute from District 4; and Aamer Husain plays Felix Ravinstill, mentor to a tribute from District 11.
Jason Schwartzman is on board as Lucretius “Lucky” Flickerman, the host of the 10th Hunger Games and an ancestor of Caesar Flickerman, played by Stanley Tucci in the previous The Hunger Games films. Viola Davis is playing Head Gamemaker Volumnia Gaul who is described as creative and as fearsome as she is formidable.
Francis Lawrence (Catching Fire, Mockingjay Part 1, Mockingjay Part 2) is directing and Michael Lesslie (Macbeth) wrote the most recent draft of the screenplay. Lawrence, Nina Jacobson, and Brad Simpson are producing, with author Suzanne Collins, Tim Palen, and Jim Miller executive producing.
The Hunger Games: The Battle of Songbirds and Snakes opens in theaters on November 17, 2023.
Lionsgate’s official synopsis:
Years before he would become the tyrannical President of Panem, 18-year-old Coriolanus Snow (Blyth) is the last hope for his fading lineage, a once-proud family that has fallen from grace in a post-war Capitol. With the 10th annual Hunger Games fast approaching, the young Snow is alarmed when he is assigned to mentor Lucy Gray Baird (Zegler), the girl tribute from impoverished District 12. But, after Lucy Gray commands all of Panem’s attention by defiantly singing during the reaping ceremony, Snow thinks he might be able to turn the odds in their favor.
Uniting their instincts for showmanship and newfound political savvy, Snow and Lucy Gray’s race against time to survive will ultimately reveal who is a songbird, and who is a snake.
