The Hunger Games (Franchise)

[Daniel]

Teaser for the prequel:

[Daniel]

Peter Dinklage casts as Casca Highbottom. It's funny, he criticized Disney on the Snow White remake and now he'll be starring in a film with Rachel Zegler! Awkward!

[Ben]

And, if I may make the obvious point, he doesn’t even have a high bottom…

[EricJ]

And Lionsgate is still so desperate for a (Franchise) of their own, they're Warner-rebooting their old one.
Guess that Dubai theme park didn't work out.

[Ben]

They’ve even fallen into the "pompously long and over-winded title" trap of two halves: featuring the original franchise branding *and* trying to describe what this newfangled thing is to fans and newbies alike. And another plus point on this one for going full bloat and attempting to put a poetically erudite spin on it with the use of "ballad" in that subtitle, trying to give it a certain baked-in charm that only makes it even more doomed to failure…


It’s no "Seagulls", but this is one of the best things that spun out of Hunger Games already. Evil pillows!

[Farerb]

It's actually an adaptation of an actual book "The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes" written by Suzanne Collins, the author of the original Hunger Games books.

[Ben]

Which, I note, was written after the success of the films. As with Fantastic Beasts and whatever comes next for Game Of Thrones, prequels are the new sequels, and these things generally are not written or made because there’s a burning story to tell, but rather more money to be made, and I see reaction to the book was "mixed" at best, which isn’t a great start…

[Daniel]

Viola Davis cast as villain.

[EricJ]

Wow, Viola Davis playing a villain? Is that even ALLOWED??

[Ben]

Everybody has a dark side. Amanda Waller wasn’t exactly squeaky clean. And a friend of hers makes a wicked chocolate pie…

[Daniel]

Teaser poster:



Fab!

[Daniel]

New poster and trailer:





Jason Schwartzman playing the father (possibly grandfather) of Stanley Tucci's Caesar Flickerman character from the original series is some inspired casting. Even sounds similar! Looks good.