It has been nine years since we last saw "Hunger Games" in cinemas. Now that the "The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes" trailer has dropped, fans of the film franchise could not help but wonder about what the lead character, Lucy Gray Baird, played by Rachel Zegler, was singing in the trailer.
Starring Tom Blythe as a Young Coriolanus Snow, along with Viola Davis, Peter Dinklage, and Hunter Schafer on the cast, "The Hunger Games" prequel, "The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes" take on what happened at the 10th Hunger Games in Panem, way before Snow became president.
Rachel Zegler Music Career
Unbeknownst to many, Rachel Zegler has a huge background in music and in theater. She gained significant prominence in her debut performance in Steven Spielberg's "West Side Story" as Maria.
Because of how impressive her performance was, she won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Movie Musical or Comedy in 2022, beating Oscar winners Marion Cotillard, Emma Stone, Jenifer Lawrence, and Alana Haim along the way.
Rachel Zegler Singing on 'Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes'
In an interview with Variety, "Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes" producer Nina Jacobson revealed how the new superheroine differs from Jennifer Lawrence's Katniss Everdeen.
On the stark differences between the two, Lucy Gray Baird, played by Zegler, is someone who would go up on stage and sing a song.
"It's a far cry from 'I volunteer as tribute' to 'I'm gonna get up there, grab the mic and sing a song.'," she revealed.
In the trailer, Lucy can be seen singing at one point, even introduced by Jason Schwartzman's Lucky Flickerman, the father of Stanley Tucci's character Caesar.
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Rachel Zegler's song in the "Hunger Games" trailer was not revealed yet, but Baird said that fans should expect "something extraordinary" when it drops. Speculation arose online that a version of "Hanging Tree," a song that Everdeen, played by Lawrence on the 2015 film sung, will be remaked into the movie. Based on the novel, Baird was the original writer of the ominous District 12 song.
She also mentioned that the songs that Zegler recorded for the film were like how Tom Hooper's method in "Les Miserables" - it was live recorded.
"Dave Cobb did the music and he is incredible. His songs are earworms. They stick in your head. They're beautiful. Rachel often would opt not to do playback, and just sing it live. Often, after they would call cut, people would just go bananas clapping!"
However, that shouldn't be the only thing that people should be waiting for - Jacobson revealed that the finale moment of Baird was "un-f**ing-believeable," describing her voice as "jaw dropping."
"The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes" will hit theatres on Nov. 17, 2023.
Watch the full trailer below:
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