The cast of The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes keeps growing, with more stars signing up alongside prequel leads Tom Blyth and Rachel Zegler.

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes takes place about 10 years after the war that created the Panem of the Hunger Games lore. The upcoming film adaptation is expected to differ from the original movies quite significantly, as the games will be viewed from an entirely new perspective during a time period that is considered to be "less glitzy."

The story takes place around the 10th annual Hunger Games when a young Coriolanus Snow is chosen to mentor District 12 tribute, Lucy Gray Baird. According to the official synopsis, the duo will try to turn the odds in their favor by uniting "their instincts for showmanship and newfound political savvy" in a race against time to survive.

Francis Lawrence, who helmed Catching Fire, Mockingjay Part 1, and Mockingjay Part 2, is returning to the franchise to direct and produce the prequel from a screenplay by Assassin's Creed writer Michael Lesslie. Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson are also on board as producers, with Tim Palen and author Suzanne Collins as executive producers.

Keep reading for a rundown of who's in The Hunger Games prequel cast — and don't forget to bookmark the page, as we'll be updating this article with all-new casting announcements.

Tom Blyth as Young Coriolanus Snow

Tom Blyth was the first cast member to be announced for Lionsgate's adaptation of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, the prequel novel to the Hunger Games series. He will portray a young Coriolanus Snow long before he served as the brutal and conniving President of Panem, as played by Donald Sutherland in the previous movies.

Blyth is a rising talent who is well-known for his role as the titular outlaw of the Epix series Billy the Kid. He also had a guest role playing Archie Baldwin on one episode of HBO's The Gilded Age and was cast as Glen Byam Shaw in the 2021 biographical drama film Benediction, which chronicled the life of celebrated war poet Siegfried Sassoon.

Rachel Zegler as Lucy Gray Baird

Rachel Zegler has been cast as Lucy Gray Baird, the female tribute from the impoverished District 12 who is mentored by Coriolanus Snow for the 10th annual Hunger Games. She is a pivotal character in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes novel, which chronicles the rise of the villainous Snow before he eventually becomes the President of Panem.

Zegler made her film debut in 2021, playing Maria Vasquez in Steven Spielberg's feature-length adaptation of West Side Story. She is next set to appear in Shazam! Fury of the Gods alongside Helen Mirren and Lucy Liu, though she's also whistling while she works on the set of Disney's live-action Snow White that has Mark Webb in the director's chair.

Hunter Schafer as Tigris Snow

Hunter Schafer has joined the cast of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes movie opposite Blyth and Zegler. According to Deadline, she will play Tigris Snow, the cousin and confidante of Coriolanus Snow. She acts as one of his trusted advisors in the early years, guiding him on everything from "his role as mentor to the core of his moral compass."

Schafer made her acting debut in 2019, portraying Jules Vaughn in HBO's Euphoria. She continued in that role for a second season while also co-writing and co-executive producing a special episode for the critically acclaimed series. She's currently in front of the camera again filming Cuckoo, an upcoming horror movie from director Tilman Singer.

Laurel Marsden as Mayfair Lipp

Lionsgate has also announced that Laurel Marsden is in the ensemble cast of the prequel movie, per Deadline. She will be playing a character named Mayfair Lipp, who is responsible for placing Lucy Gray Baird's name into contention for the 10th deadly Hunger Games, acting as a catalyst to the events that follow for the District 12 tribute.

Marsden recently made the jump into the MCU playing Zoe Zimmer in the Disney+ series Ms. Marvel, and she has just wrapped filming on the horror-thriller film All Fun and Games. Before that, she starred alongside Sophie Turner and Corey Hawkins in Quibi's Survive, which just about made it onto our recommended watch list for the streaming platform.

Jason Schwartzman as Lucretius "Lucky" Flickerman

Lionsgate announced in June that Jason Schwartzman had become the latest addition to the cast of the upcoming Hunger Games prequel. He will be portraying Lucretius "Lucky" Flickerman, the host of the 10th Hunger Games and ancestor to Caesar Flickerman, who was memorably portrayed by Stanley Tucci in the original series of films.

Schwartzman is a frequent collaborator with Wes Anderson, having made his film debut in the 1998 film Rushmore before appearing in six more movies helmed by the director. He will next be seen in Anderson's Asteroid City, opposite Tilda Swinton, Bill Murray, Tom Hanks, Margot Robbie, Jeff Goldblum, Scarlett Johansson, and many more.

Other Tributes

The first round of cast announcements for tributes appearing in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes came by way of Deadline. The list featured Jerome Lance as Marcus from District 2, Knox Gibson as Bobbin from District 8, and Mackenzie Lansing as Coral from District 4.

Nick Benson later joined the line-up playing Jessup, another tribute from District 12 alongside Zegler's Lucy Gray Baird. Luna Steeples is also in the mix, starring as Dill from District 11, while Hiroki Berrecloth is said to be portraying Treech from District 7.

Other Mentors

On the mentoring side of things, Ashley Liao is stepping up to play Clemensia Dovecote, one of Snow's closest friends who will mentor a District 11 tribute. She is appearing in the movie alongside Aamer Husain as Felix Ravinstill, a fellow mentor to a District 11 tribute.

Lilly Cooper has also been named as a mentor. She will be playing a character called Arachne Crane who will act as a guide to a tribute from District 10 in the Hunger Games, together with Josh Andrés Rivera as Sejanus Plinth, who will work with a tribute from District 2.

The Hunger Games franchise is slated to return to the big screen in November 2023. Keep checking back here for all the latest casting updates for The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.

Adele Ankers-Range is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow her on Twitter.

Return to Monkey Island director Ron Gilbert will no longer talk about the game online due to the amount of abuse he has received, particularly about its new art style.

As reported by Video Games Chronicle, Gilbert said on his personal blog (the entirety of which has now been shut down) that "the joy of sharing has been driven from me", and it isn't the first time the developer has been forced to defend the game following fan backlash.

"I’m shutting down comments. People are just being mean and I’m having to delete personal attack comments," Gilbert said. "It’s an amazing game and everyone on the team is very proud of it. Play it or don’t play it but don’t ruin it for everyone else. I won’t be posting anymore about the game. The joy of sharing has been driven from me."

Bang up job, everybody.

(I've seen a lot of passionate but polite/polite-adjacent discussion going on, but the comments on Ron's blog were a total shitshow.) pic.twitter.com/BUBoPdU1fS

— Dominic Armato (@SkilletDoux) June 30, 2022

Gilbert and developer Terrible Toybox have received criticism over the game's art style, which fans have criticised for not matching the original games that were released more than 30 years ago.

Gilbert said previously that "Return to Monkey Island may not be the art style you wanted or were expecting but it's the art style I wanted." He said the point of the games was never to have pixel art but instead to use state-of-the-art tech and art to push the franchise forward, claiming that, even if he'd stuck around to make Monkey Island 3, it wouldn't have looked like the previous games.

The game was first revealed in April and is coming to PC and Nintendo Switch at some point later this year, with other consoles currently unconfirmed. Though it's not especially clear what this means, the game's website declared Return to Monkey Island will be "the exciting conclusion to the Monkey Island series."

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer who occasionally remembers to tweet @thelastdinsdale. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.

Despite Thor: Love and Thunder and Moon Knight not feeling very close together within the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the writers of each property collaborated pretty closely to ensure their storylines didn't clash.

That's because the one consistent element across the incoming fourth Thor film and the Moon Knight Disney+ series is the inclusion of gods. Thor is, of course, set amid Norse mythology – and the new film introduces a take on Greek myth, and new villain Gorr the God Butcher. Moon Knight, meanwhile, features multiple Egyptian gods.

The series' head writer, Jeremy Slater, told The Playlist that, while Moon Knight was allowed to exist in its own space in the MCU and doesn't really have strong connections to the rest of the universe, his team worked with the Thor writers to ensure their gods slotted together in the overall lore.

"Marvel was great about giving us our own little corner and our own little space and saying, 'okay, the Egyptian gods can be their own thing,' especially since we’re only seeing three of them on screen over the course of this story.

"But we did speak extensively with the producers of Thor: Love and Thunder just to find out what they were doing with gods in their story, to make sure that we weren’t going to be contradicting anything. At the time, all of the release dates were still up in the air, and we didn’t know if we would be coming out before Thor: Love and Thunder or following up Love and Thunder."

Moon Knight is the first MCU Disney+ series to not feature any major cameos referencing other properties, but Slater explained this wasn't always the case. He and the writing team originally had plans to connect the series to the new Thor film, with different versions ready to go depending on which one released first.

The team decided against any references in the end, however, because "these release dates are going to be determined by much larger factors than whatever’s happening in our show," Slater said. "So the safest thing to protect both of these properties is just to give them some distance.”

That's not to say they'll never cross over, as they obviously do exist within the same universe already. "Marvel is constantly expanding the boundaries of the MCU, and it’s getting bigger, and it’s weirder, and it’s giving us a lot more runway to tell cool stories in the future," he added. "I could definitely see some of these gods crossing over into other properties or showing up in other forms in future shows."

Thor: Love and Thunder will release on July 8 and sees Chris Hemsworth's character take on Gorr the God Butcher with the help of Natalie Portman's Jane Foster, who makes her return to the MCU as the Mighty Thor.

Moon Knight's six episode series, on the other hand, wrapped in early May and received a positive reception. In our 8/10 review, IGN said: "Moon Knight, featuring a brilliant performance by Oscar Isaac, is massive platter of out-there ideas that succeeds more than it stalls."

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer who occasionally remembers to tweet @thelastdinsdale. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.

Valve has clarified that its quiet switch of SSDs in the Steam Deck will have "no impact to performance" following concerns that the hardware had been downgraded.

Polygon reported that Valve had changed the Steam Deck specs, with some 256GB and 512GB models coming with a different SSD than what was initially advertised. A switch from the PCIe Gen 3 x4 NVMe SSD to the PCIe Gen 3 x2 NVMe SSD appeared to be a downgrade, but Valve has refuted this to IGN.

"Many Steam Deck components come from multiple suppliers for improved redundancy and production capacity," a Valve spokesperson said. "One of our SSD suppliers provides PCIe Gen 3 x4 NVMe SSDs, while another provides a x2 (2 lane) SSD. Our team has tested both components extensively, and determined that there is no impact to performance between the two models.

"SSD performance is currently gated by factors not related to PCIe bandwidth. In extremely uncommon cases, differences in read / write speed caps may minimally impact file transfer speeds, but OS performance, loading times, game performance, and game responsiveness are identical between the x2 and x4 drives."

The new strategy to improve production capacity appears to be working as earlier this week Valve announced that it will double the number of Steam Decks it will ship. The company has otherwise had a slow but steady rollout period for its handheld PC, that started in February with Valve boss Gabe Newell hand delivering them in Seattle.

The highly anticipated dock accessory hasn't had the same fate, however, as earlier in June Valve delayed its launch date again. The docking station – which allows players to plug their Steam Deck into a TV or monitor and play it like a more traditional PC – was previously meant to be a launch day accessory but was delayed to late spring and has now been delayed again.

In our 7/10 review of the hardware, IGN said: "When Steam Deck lives up to its promises, it's sublime, but when it falls short, it falls hard."

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer who occasionally remembers to tweet @thelastdinsdale. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.

When identifying the most wallet-destroying product pairings ever devised, the LEGO + movie paradigm rates right up there. We all have our favourite films, and many of us yearn for a means to make those paltry 2-to-3 hour experiences "live" a little longer. Back in the day, we had crappy video game tie-ins for this. Not sadly, they went the way of the dodo, thanks to ludicrous modern game budgets and the need to sell a billion copies or it's bye bye developer.

Nowadays, if you want to own a lovely companion piece to a film, the best you're going to get is several hundred pieces of companionship. They'll all be in conveniently numbered bags alongside an instruction manual. Better yet, even if the culturally significant flick of your heart debuted in the '70s, '80s or '90s, there's still a decent chance LEGO has a set to sell you. Adults with disposable incomes pay big for nostalgia. LEGO knows this very well.

Case in point: today's build, the McCallister family's ridiculously large abode from Home Alone. Armed with an incredibly flimsy excuse—Australia's forthcoming Christmas in July season—I'm going to knock this iconic set location together. Then, I'm going to test your personal budgeting resolve by highlighting a host of other (modern and available) movie inspired LEGO sets. Best of luck with those…

Turning your inner Kevin up to eleven

Let's address the red-bricked elephant in the room from the get-go. The subject matter for this build is proper huge. Looking back from 2022, it's insane that a married couple with five kids who hate a jetset, could ever plausibly afford a McMansion this big. The plastic version of said suburban castle is quite chonky, too, weighing in at 3,955 pieces and a final footprint of 27cm (11") x 34cm (14") x 37cm (15").

The build begins with everybody's favourite lunkheads, the Wet Bandits, followed by their Oh-Kay getaway van (complete with stolen goods). Not long after, you're onto the boring stuff—the bloody great foundations of what is (in real-life) a Georgian-style colossus of 4,200 square foot living space. You'll find that the actual five bedroom, four-room master suite and three bathroom beast has been down-sized considerably by LEGO. For example, you'll not be getting that detached double garage. Reasonable, cost-lowering cuts, I think.

As the construction continues and the hours mount up, it's hard to feel shortchanged by LEGO's superdeformed take on this house. The foundations soon become laced with a clever cog system which will twirl the objects in Kevin's “I'm not livin' alone” subterfuges. In no time, you've got walls and generous bay windows in place, plus some family photos and the lower section of that iconic staircase/toboggan track. The Kev minifig appears soon after, as if to tempt you into a few test runs.

Rather than make you build a whole basic dollhouse structure first and then fill that with furniture and crap, the designers ask you to populate individual rooms as you go. In a jiff, you'll have a living room replete with a hearth, hung stockings, prezzies, landmine-like decorations and a legal-friendly Michael Jordan cutout on rails. That's adjacent to a fully decked out dining room with a grandfather clock, a fan for roosterfying intruders, some delicious Mac and Cheese dinner and a four-seater table. My only gripe with the ground level of this house: those chairs aren't anchored well, at all. They keel over quicker than Harry and Marv on black iced stairs.

Settling in for second storey time

With the groundwork laid, it's time to clip together a fresh base, followed by the master bedroom and ensuite. Honestly, it's the most boring section of the house, aside from the big four-post bed/trampoline and a shower for those (Frankly) kinda creepy encounters between Kev and his uncle. Buzz's room is where the real action is at. In the movie, it's portrayed as an off-limits goldmine of stuff Kev wants, and that's well realised with extra objects here. Expect a hilarious picture of Buzz's girlfriend, plus a collapsable set of treasure laden shelves which stand between you and access to that sweet, sweet BB gun.

The last sections of this delightful build include a generously stocked attic, a tree house and a kitchen/basement combo. The latter hooks onto the back of the house in a way that makes little dimensional sense, though that cheatery doesn't detract much from the overall charm too much. Indeed, once all of the structures come together, you'll probably be impressed by how modular and accessible all the internal spaces are. The potential to get “hands in” and have a play through the house is very much a thing.

Aside from confirming that you get Old Man Marley and Kevin's mum as minifigs, I'd rather not spoil too much more of this Easter Egg packed build. (You can, of course, dig through that embedded slideshow if you're still curious.) What I will say is this: it's blatantly obvious that the designers of this set were apex level Home Alone fans who sought to fill every studded inch of this thing with head nods to either Home Alone or Home Alone 2.

If you're looking for a piece of movie memorabilia that shrieks authenticity at a decibel range reserved for kids trying aftershave, then this is it. LEGO's Home Alone House 21330 doesn't come cheap—in fact, its target demo appears to be cashed up mobsters like Johnny, Acey or Snakes. That being said, this house ain't no sans-toppings cheese pizza—it's fully laden, prepared with love, and worth every penny stolen from an older sibling.

Other great movie inspired LEGO

Adam’s our Aussie deals wrangler. You can watch him game on YouTube.