$349M Dystopian Movie That Revitalized A Franchise Soars On Netflix Ahead Of New Release

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Published Jul 18, 2026, 11:35 AM EDT

Matthew Rudoy is one of ScreenRant's Movie & TV News Editors. He covers the latest in movie & TV news, with a focus on major franchises like Star Wars, The Boys, and Game of Thrones, and also writes some features and reviews. He wrote lists for ScreenRant from 2017-2022, became a news writer in 2023, a senior staff writer in 2024, and an editor in 2025.

A dystopian franchise soars on Netflix before returning to theaters.

The 2010s were dominated by young adult dystopian franchises being adapted for the big screen, including The Hunger Games, Divergent, and The Maze Runner. The Hunger Games released four movies during this decade, with each installment being among the top 10 highest grossing films worldwide four years in a row. There were also three Divergent movie adaptations and three from The Maze Runner franchise.

In the 2010s, it was The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes that revitalized its dystopian franchise. The Suzanne Collins prequel novel was published in 2020, 10 years after the last book was released. A movie adaptation starring Tom Blyth as young Coriolanus Snow and Rachel Zegler as Lucy Gray Baird came to theaters in 2023, eight years after the debut of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 2.

On Netflix in the United States, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is now in fifth place on the streaming chart. This comes only four days after the film was added to the streaming platform in the U.S. The only movies ahead of it in the top 10 are Shipwrecked: Nightmare at Sea, The Body in the Locker, The Boss Baby, and Nothing to Lose. It is ahead of Voicemails for Isabelle, White Chicks, Minions: The Rise of Gru, Old Henry, and Despicable Me 3.

Following a significant hiatus in print and on-screen, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes revitalized the franchise, with the book becoming a massive bestseller, and the adaptation grossing $349 million worldwide after being made on a production budget of $100 million. While this didn't reach the financial heights of the previous films, it was still a box office success, bringing the franchise total to an impressive $3.3 billion worldwide across five installments.

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is a prequel, set 64 years before The Hunger Games, that explores Snow's initial rise to power, his doomed romance with Lucy Gray, and how the games were shaped into the violent spectacle that they would become. This helped pave the way for another prequel, Sunrise on the Reaping, to be published in 2025, followed by a movie adaptation that will be theatrically released on November 20. The most recent prequel takes place 24 years before The Hunger Games and follows Haymitch Abernathy and his tragic road to victory during the second Quarter Quell.

Along with Snow and Lucy Gracy, other key characters in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes include Sejanus Plinth (Josh Andrés Rivera), Dr. Volumnia Gaul (Viola Davis), Dean Casca Highbottom (Peter Dinklage), Tigris Snow (Hunter Schafer), and Lucretius "Lucky" Flickerman (Jason Schwartzman). Francis Lawrence directed the film and later returned to direct Sunrise on the Reaping. He has directed all the franchise's adaptations since Catching Fire.

With there being 40 years between the events of The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes and Sunrise on the Reaping, Blyth is not playing Snow in the upcoming movie. The villainous role will instead be portrayed by Ralph Fiennes. In the original four films, the character was played by Donald Sutherland, who passed away in 2024.

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is streaming on Netflix. The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping releases in theaters on November 20.