WATCH: 'The Hunger Games' prequel drops new trailer
MANILA, Philippines — Lionsgate has revealed a second trailer for "The Hunger Games" prequel "The Ballad of Songbird & Snakes" before its mid-November release.
The movie is based on a novel by Suzanne Collins that takes place several decades before Katniss Everdeen was born, when a teenage Coriolanus Snow mentors a tribute from the impoverished District 12 at the 10th Hunger Games.
The events of "The Ballad of Songbird & Snakes" set Snow on his path to become the tyrannical President of Panem.
The new trailer begins with clips that were seen in the trailer released last April, followed by Viola Davis' Volumnia Gaul — head gamemaker who initially implemented the Games — asking Tom Blyth's young Snow what the Games are for.
Snow responds that the Games are to punish the districts. Academy Dean and the Games' intellectual author Casca Highbottom, played by "Game of Thrones" star Peter Dinklage, informs Snow that he and his fellow mentors are meant to train tributes to become spectacles, not survivors.
More scenes from the movie are also revealed, including those of Snow with his tribute, Lucy Gray Baird, played by "West Side Story" breakout star Rachel Zegler; Snow's signature white roses and life outside as a Games mentor and Gaul showing Snow her intentions for the Games.
WATCH: Peter Dinklage, Rachel Zegler in new trailer for 'Hunger Games' prequel
"Good luck with that poor little songbird... it's a mystery, and mysteries have a way of driving people mad," Highbottom tells Snow.
Toward the end are quick cuts of Baird fighting for her life in the Games — including a huge vat of colored mutated snakes falling into an arena — and Gaul asking Snow once again the reason for the Games' existence.
Like that April trailer, the new trailer finishes with the voice of the older Snow, played by veteran actor Donald Sutherland, saying, "It's the things we love most that destroy us," a line lifted from "Mockingjay."
The trailer also features Zegler's version of "The Hanging Tree," originally sung by Jennifer Lawrence's Everdeen in "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1."
Apparently Zegler's Baird originally penned the song after witnessing a District 12 rebel executed at a tree due to the lack of proper gallows.
Starring with Blyth, Zegler, Davis and Dinklage are Hunter Schafer, Jason Schwartzman, Josh Andrés Rivera and Burn Gorman.
"The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbird & Snakes" theatrically releases in the United States on November 17, with the Philippine wide release likely two days earlier. — Video from Lionsgate Movies YouTube channel
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