Hunger Games: The Ballad Of Songbirds & Snakes Trailer Introduces A Very Different Battle Royale

The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes takes us back more than six decades before Katniss Everdeen fought in her first Hunger Games, and as we see in the first trailer released on Thursday evening, the filmmakers gave the film a very retro look indeed.

The art style of the film, which tells the story of the future President Snow mentoring a Hunger Games contestant when he was much younger, takes a hard turn from the retro-futuristic look of the original four films, draping everything with a fascinating early-to-mid 20th Century aesthetic.

Check out the trailer here.

The trailer presents all the major players--from Snow himself (Tom Blyth) to his mentee Lucy (Rachel Zegler), and on to Peter Dinklage's Casca Highbottom, the game's creator and the intense Dr. Gaul (Viola Davis). And we even got to meet Lucky Flickerman (Jason Schwartzman), presumably related to Stanley Tucci's Caesar Flickerman from the previous movies.

While it's otherwise light on plot, that new aesthetic results in some pretty cool imagery. And the Hunger Games themselves seem to take place in a smaller arena here--one that bears no resemblance to the lush jungle of the previous movies.

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes is directed by Francis Lawrence, who has handled directing duties on every Hunger Games movie except the first one. The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes hits theaters November 17.