The film stars Tom Blyth, Rachel Zegler, Hunter Schafer, Jason Schwartzman, Peter Dinklage, Josh Andrés Rivera, and Viola Davis.

In the film, Coriolanus Snow (Blyth) is called on to mentor Lucy Gray Baird (Zegler), a Games tribute, as he seeks to restore his family's prosperity in Panem.

In 2019, the studio announced plans for Songbirds & Snakes and official development on the film began a year later, with Lawrence returning as director and Leslie and Ardnt serving as screenwriters.

Blyth and Zegler were cast in May 2022 and principal photography began that July and lasted until that November, with filming locations including Wrocław, Berlin, and Leipzig.

During the reaping ceremony, she engages the Capitol audience by slipping a snake down the dress of Mayor Lipp's daughter, Mayfair, then defiantly sings to the crowd.

After Lucy Gray saves Coriolanus from falling debris, he gives her rat poison as a weapon and says the bombings have opened tunnels in the arena, providing additional hiding places during the Games.

Coriolanus poisons Dean Highbottom's drug stash, killing the latter and beginning his rise to power, while Lucy Gray's fate is left unknown.

[10] Isobel Jesper Jones plays Mayfair Lipp, the daughter of District 12's mayor, a rival of Lucy Gray, and Billy Taupe's new girlfriend.

[10] Other members of Lucy Gray's travelling musician group, the Covey, include Vaughan Reilly as Maude Ivory,[10] Honor Gillies as Barb Azure,[11] Eike Onyambu as Tam Amber,[11] and Konstantin Taffet as Clerk Carmine.

[12] In June 2019, Joe Drake, chairman of the Lionsgate Motion Picture Group, announced that the company was working with author Suzanne Collins with regards to an adaptation of the novel The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.

[19] In June 2022, Josh Andrés Rivera (who previously starred in 2021's West Side Story alongside Zegler), Hunter Schafer and Jason Schwartzman were cast.

[15][25] Filming locations included the Monument to the Battle of the Nations in Leipzig,[26] the Strausberger Platz and the Olympic Stadium in Berlin and the Centennial Hall in Wrocław.

[27] Some scenes in the film were also shot in the "Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord" in Duisburg in North Rhine-Westphalia,[28] and areas around Wałbrzych (Poland), including Boguszów-Gorce; a fragment of the trail leading to Chełmiec Mountain, and the lake in Grzędy.

[29] The soundtrack for The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes contains the film's version of songs such as "The Hanging Tree", "Pure as the Driven Snow", which were live performed by Zegler, and produced by Dave Cobb, which heavily drew from Appalachian-country folk music.

The website's consensus reads: "An outstanding cast and exciting story help make The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes a worthy return to Panem in spite of a rushed and somewhat frustrating ending.

[2] Zoe Guy of Vulture reported that "some critics view the 158-minute spectacle as an overwrought snoozefest, while others argue that Ballad is the most satisfying entry in the entire franchise".

[54] Brian Truitt of USA Today praised it as "an enticing blend of dystopian action epic and musical drama that surpasses the previous films".

[55] In a negative review for The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw wrote that "the interest, dramatic momentum and energy" of the franchise "have frankly expired", concluding that "this movie finally ties itself into various knots to prefigure the later world of Katniss, but the time to end the Games came long ago".

[56] Clarisse Loughrey of The Independent criticized the film for "[squandering] the anger of novelist Suzanne Collins's source material" and "[diluting] its biggest villain", further deriding Snow's characterization as a "yassification of a future monster".