Hear Rachel Zegler Perform ‘The Hanging Tree’ for ‘The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes’

A new era of the Hunger Games is almost upon us. Rachel Zegler has unveiled a new take on fan favorite “The Hanging Tree,” previously performed by Jennifer Lawrence in 2014, ahead of the premiere of The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes.

In the prequel film, Zegler plays Lucy Gray Baird, a tribute from the impoverished District 12 who is selected to compete in the annual Hunger Games. The movie will depict the origin of “The Hanging Tree,” which is first sung by Zegler’s character and then passed down for generations to come until Lawrence’s Katniss Everdeen sings it in Mockingjay – Part 1.

The prequel, in theaters Nov. 17, follows a young Coriolanus Snow (Tom Blyth), who is the last hope for his failing lineage, the once-proud Snow family that has fallen from grace in a post-war Capitol. Snow is reluctantly assigned to mentor Lucy Gray Baird, a tribute from the impoverished District 12. But after Lucy Gray’s charm captivates the audience of Panem, Snow sees an opportunity to shift their fates.

Filmmaker Francis Lawrence, who directed the previous Hunger Games movies Catching Fire and the two Mockingjays, helmed the film, which is an adaptation of Suzanne Collins’ most recent novel. The film also stars Tom Blyth, Viola Davis, Hunter Schafer, and Peter Dinklage.

Recently, Lawrence said that he regretted splitting Mockingjay into two separate movies. “I totally regret it. I totally do. I’m not sure everybody does, but I definitely do,” he said of releasing Mockingjay Part 1 in Nov. 2014 and Part 2 the following year. “In an episode of television, if you have a cliffhanger, you have to wait a week or you could just binge it and then you can see the next episode. But making people wait a year, I think, came across as disingenuous, even though it wasn’t. Our intentions were not to be disingenuous.”

He added that there was no possibility of The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes becoming two movies. “I would never let them split the book in two,” Lawrence said about the new film. “There was never a real conversation about it. It’s a long book, but we got so much shit for splitting Mockingjay into two — from fans, from critics, from everybody — that I was like, ‘No way. I’ll just make a longer movie.’”

From Rolling Stone US.