"The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes": Actress Found for Female Lead Role

Between 2012 and 2015, Lionsgate achieved great success with the four-part film series "The Hunger Games". This was followed last year by the announcement of a prequel entitled "The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes". While the original four movies were based on the first three volumes of Suzanne Collins' novels, the upcoming movie builds on the fourth volume, which was also released as a prequel in May 2020. So far, it was known that newcomer Tom Blyth will play the infamous villain Coriolanus Snow. Now the people in charge also seem to have found a female leading actress. The talk is of 21-year-old Rachel Zegler, who is best known for her Golden Globe award-winning role as Maria Vasquez in "West Side Story". She stars as Lucy Gray Baird from District 12, who ends up as tribute in the 10th Hunger Games. Her mentor is the aforementioned Coriolanus, who seems extremely skeptical at first, but is then won over by Lucy's iron will. 

It will definitely be interesting to see how well "The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes" will be received by audiences after a gap of quite a few years. The release date is set for November 17, 2023.