Lionsgate has announced that Tom Blyth, who played the titular character in Billy the Kid, has joined the cast of The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.
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Blyth will be playing a young Coriolanus Snow, years before he would rule as the President of Panem. The film is an adaptation of Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games prequel novel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.
It will be directed by Francis Lawrence, who also directed the final three Hunger Games films, while franchise producer Nina Jacobson will produce alongside Brad Simpson and Francis Lawrence. Suzanne Collins and Tim Palen will serve as executive producers on the film, which is currently set to premiere in theaters on November 17, 2023.
“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,” Lawrence said of the casting. “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.”
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“Years before he would become the tyrannical President of Panem, 18-year-old Coriolanus Snow is the last hope for his fading lineage, a once-proud family that has fallen from grace in a post-war Capitol,” reads the official synopsis. “With the 10th annual Hunger Games fast approaching, the young Snow is alarmed when he is assigned to mentor Lucy Gray Baird, 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’s race against time to survive will ultimately reveal who is a songbird, and who is a snake.”
