Euphoria‘s Hunter Schafer joins The Hunger Games: The Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes

Lionsgate continues to fill out the dystopian world of Panem this week, announcing that Euphoria’s Hunter Schafer has joined the cast of upcoming Hunger Games prequel The Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes, the film that dares to ask: Could the fucked-up world depicted in The Hunger Games have been pretty fucked up in the past, too?

Schafer, who plays Jules on HBO’s provocative high school drama Euphoria, will play Tigris Snow in the new film, the cousin of Ballad’s yet-to-be-dictator protagonist, Coriolanus Snow (played in the original films by Donald Sutherland, and by Tom Blyth here). In the 2020 book on which the movie is based, Tigris is one of several characters who attempt to keep Snow at least sort of moral, rather than the mass-poisoning psycho he eventually becomes. Her adult version appeared briefly in the last Hunger Games movie, Mockingjay-Part 2, where she was a veteran Games stylist who’d turned her back on her cousin, with the character played there by Eugenie Bondurant.

Schafer, whose other recent credits include a voice turn in the recent animated film Belle, joins a cast that includes West Side Story star Rachel Zegler, playing Lucy Gray Baird, a Hunger Games contestant who’s presumably meant to be the “songbird” of the title. Lucy and Snow meet when he’s selected to “mentor” her for participation as a tributes for the 10th Hunger Games; love and murder ensue, which, there’s no way that can be a spoiler, right? You saw these movies? They’re about romantic drama and killin’?

Hunger Games author Suzanne Collins published Ballad back in 2020, diving into the grim backstory of the already-grim parent series. Lionsgate, which made a decent little killing off the 4 previous Hunger Games movies, snapped up the rights to the film version of the book promptly; the movie is currently aimed at a November 2023 release.

[via Variety]