Critics and pop culture pundits share their spoiler-free thoughts on the upcoming prequel movie The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.
The first reactions to The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes have been released on social media. The upcoming movie is a blockbuster prequel to the Hunger Games franchise, which starred Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen, a District 12 teenager living in a dystopian world who rose to become a symbol of rebellion. The new movie, set six decades earlier, will follow the future President Coriolanus Snow (Tom Blyth) as he mentors District 12 tribute Lucy Gray Baird (Rachel Zegler), a contestant in an earlier version of the inter-district fight to the death known as the Hunger Games.
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The embargo on the film has now lifted, allowing critics and pop culture pundits to share their spoiler-free reactions to the new movie nearly two weeks ahead of the Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes release date. While some have made critiques of various aspects including the pacing and run time, the cast is being widely praised with some viewers even suggesting the movie is in the running to be considered one of the best Hunger Games movies of them all. Check out select reactions below:
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Lauren Garafano said that, as a longtime Hunger Games fan, “I literally cannot wait to see it again when it comes out.”
How Will The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes Compare To The Other Hunger Games Movies?
With this early hype coming in strong, it seems possible that the Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes movie could rank high in the franchise both critically and commercially. However, at the time of writing, the movie is currently projected to have a middling $50 million opening weekend at the box office. That would be less than half of what the lowest-grossing Hunger Games movie made (Mockingjay – Part 2 opened to $102 million), but strong word of mouth could potentially turn things around.
So far, the box office performance of the Hunger Games sequels has consistently matched the movies’ rank among both critics and audiences on Rotten Tomatoes. This means that the movies peaked both critically and commercially with the second entry, Catching Fire, before a downhill slide with the final two entries, which split the third book, Mockingjay, into two parts. Check out a comparative ranking of the previous movies’ critic scores, audience scores, and worldwide box office below:
It remains to be seen how The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes performs critically once full reviews of the movie begin to be published closer to its premiere. If the correlation between the sequels’ scores and box office holds true, the prequel will depend on reviews to perform well financially. However, the Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes cast have received special dispensation from SAG-AFTRA to promote the movie during the strike, meaning there could be an extra boost from the actors taking part in interviews and other pre-release promotion. Still, the reviews will be key in building buzz for a new Hunger Games movie.