Michael Buckner
The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is perhaps dressed up like a prequel in its early roots story of villain-to-be Coriolanus Snow, and a few would possibly assume that Rachel Zegler’s Lucy Gray Baird is simply an early days Katniss from District 12.
However, these hasty generalizations would rob the movie of its chic uniqueness, for at its core this sci-fi political motion thriller has the underpinnings of a chic romantic nation western musical, and while you lastly see it, you’ll get what we imply.
Setting this Hunger Games by filmmaker Francis Lawrence other than his final three with Jennifer Lawrence are the uncooked and rugged, rural Scottish and Irish influenced ballads sung by Rachel Zegler’s Lucy, who’s a member of the Covey, a touring musician group.
Beamed actor Tom Blyth about Lucy’s songs on the Los Angeles Premiere final night time for the Lionsgate film which opens on Nov. 17, “The writing that (author) Suzanne (Collins) put on the page in terms of song and lyricism is so beautiful, it’s like timeless and classic and kind of genius and almost like Shakespearean in a way.”
Lawrence and producers Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson employed Nashville mainstay music supervisor and songwriter Dave Cobb to supervise Lucy’s canon (watch the featurette under). Hunger Games franchise writer Suzanne Collins penned the songs’ lyrics.
In additional giving the music a transcendent aura in Songbirds & Snakes, Lawrence had Zegler carry out her songs dwell on set.
Zegler advised Deadline’s Katie Campione about that on-set expertise final night time: “There is nothing like hearing one’s voice in a space live and as somebody who has been training vocally for ten years it was really important to me as a viewer of movies and musical alike; when you’re witnessing it, you can tell it adds emotion when someone is singing live in the room; emotion for other people who get to watch and listen, but also for someone who is singing.”
“I’m grateful that the filmmakers trusted me to do that,” added the West Side Story actress.
The manufacturing tapped multi-platinum promoting and 3x Grammy winner Olivia Rodrigo to pen and carry out the closing credit music “Can’t Catch Me Now”. Rodrigo advised Deadline, that she “watched the movie a few months ago and really fell in love with the character of Lucy Gray and everything she represents. I wrote that song from her perspective and it was a fun challenge.”
Lawrence advised Deadline that he by no means instructed Blyth to emulate Donald Sutherland’s persona or mannerism from the earlier movies.
“Didn’t want him to study Donald,” says Lawrence, “Didn’t want him to pretend to be Donald in any way.”
“I wanted him to own the character, we’re meeting the guy at a very young age, not fully formed. Wanted him to play the way he would play it,” the director behind Hunger Games: Catching Fire and Mockingjay Part One and Two added.
“There are physical sides of him that you can believe that he can grow up into the Snow we know,” Lawrence continued, “There is an intelligence and sophistication to him that you sort of believe can turn into the Snow.”
When it involves a sequel, Jacobson says it boils all the way down to Collins.
“Suzanne is our north star.” If she offers us materials she has, concepts she desires to discover on this world, I’m all the time going to be the primary one to wish to be there.”
Added Jacobson, “People get weary of the idea that sequels are inevitable. This was not inevitable and whatever may or may not come, is not inevitable either.”
