The Hunger Games prequel film The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes will be released in theaters on November 17, 2023.

Revealed at CinemaCon 2022, the prequel story will be based on Suzanne Collins' book of the same name and will "focus on Coriolanus Snow at age 18, years before he would become the tyrannical President of Panem."

"Young Coriolanus is handsome and charming, and though the Snow family has fallen on hard times, he sees a chance for a change in his fortunes when he is chosen to be a mentor for the Tenth Hunger Games… only to have his elation dashed when he is assigned to mentor the girl tribute from impoverished District 12," the official description continues.

Lionsgate announced The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes in 2020, and confirmed that Francis Lawrence, who directed Catching Fire and Mockingjay Part 1 & 2, would return to lead this new story. Collins' novel was released on May 19, 2020.

No casting has been revealed for the film, but we do know that Collins will write the film's treatment and will serve as an executive producer. Oscar-winner Michael Arndt will adapt the sceenplay.

“Suzanne’s new book has been worth the wait. It offers everything fans could hope for and expect from The Hunger Games while also breaking new ground and introducing an entirely new canvas of characters," said Joe Drake, chairman of the Lionsgate Motion Picture Group, in the announcement. "The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is creatively thrilling and takes this world to complex new dimensions that open up amazing cinematic possibilities. We’re thrilled to reunite this filmmaking team with this very unique franchise, and we can’t wait to begin production.”

Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.

Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

It looks as though Samwise Gamgee is a fan of Amazon’s The Rings of Power.

During an interview with Sam Maggs at Calgary Expo 2022, actor Sean Astin revealed that he’s already seen the preview… and it gave him chills.

“I for one am excited,” he said. “I saw the preview for it, and it gave me chills. It looked like they got it. I've been saying the whole time, they're gonna do it right. There's no way Amazon is gonna pay almost a billion dollars for a franchise just to screw it up.”

Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is set during the second age of Middle Earth – thousands of years before the events of both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

Nevertheless, Astin believes the new series will bring a new generation of fans to the film trilogy.

“You just think, how long before it will be fresh? For an entire, at least one or two generations, it'll be brand new. They'll end up discovering our version of The Lord of the Rings as a consequence of seeing what will be new to them.”

The upcoming series will delve into the rise of Sauron as well as the last alliance between Elves and Men… and even includes some characters we know and love, even if they look a bit different.

“It will bring new awareness to what we did, so it's all good,” he added. “And if in the unlikely event it's not good, okay. I still credit people with being determined and trying and expressing themselves. And I feel that way about all remakes. You have classics that you think 'please don't touch that,' but the truth is, nothing can ever take it away.”

Still, it sounds as though Astin isn’t too precious about his time as Samwise Gamgee and expects to see The Lord of The Rings remade someday.

“Tolkien, as a master storyteller, has created a work that will forever be reinterpreted,” he said. “Forever. I'm just one Samwise, there will be many, many Samwises to carry the torch of the ideas, the language, and the heart of that character.”

Will fan favourite Gandalf the Grey make an appearance? Not likely… but with a whole gang of new characters, there’s plenty of lore to get stuck into in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

Additional reporting by Cian Maher.

It looks as though Samwise Gamgee is a fan of Amazon’s The Rings of Power.

During an interview with Sam Maggs at Calgary Expo 2022, actor Sean Astin revealed that he’s already seen the preview… and it gave him chills.

“I for one am excited,” he said. “I saw the preview for it, and it gave me chills. It looked like they got it. I've been saying the whole time, they're gonna do it right. There's no way Amazon is gonna pay almost a billion dollars for a franchise just to screw it up.”

Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is set during the second age of Middle Earth – thousands of years before the events of both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

Nevertheless, Astin believes the new series will bring a new generation of fans to the film trilogy.

“You just think, how long before it will be fresh? For an entire, at least one or two generations, it'll be brand new. They'll end up discovering our version of The Lord of the Rings as a consequence of seeing what will be new to them.”

The upcoming series will delve into the rise of Sauron as well as the last alliance between Elves and Men… and even includes some characters we know and love, even if they look a bit different.

“It will bring new awareness to what we did, so it's all good,” he added. “And if in the unlikely event it's not good, okay. I still credit people with being determined and trying and expressing themselves. And I feel that way about all remakes. You have classics that you think 'please don't touch that,' but the truth is, nothing can ever take it away.”

Still, it sounds as though Astin isn’t too precious about his time as Samwise Gamgee and expects to see The Lord of The Rings remade someday.

“Tolkien, as a master storyteller, has created a work that will forever be reinterpreted,” he said. “Forever. I'm just one Samwise, there will be many, many Samwises to carry the torch of the ideas, the language, and the heart of that character.”

Will fan favourite Gandalf the Grey make an appearance? Not likely… but with a whole gang of new characters, there’s plenty of lore to get stuck into in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

Additional reporting by Cian Maher.

Marvel Studios opened the gates to the multiverse in Loki and Spider-Man: No Way Home, but now those gates have been shattered. Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness features the good sorcerer in a caper across all realities. For fans, this means a heaping helping of cameos from other Marvel properties.

We've already seen a potential glimpse of a character cut from Avengers: Infinity War. We've also seen the zombified Doctor Strange from the animated What If? Series and Patrick Stewart confirmed that it is his voice in an earlier trailer, even if he won't commit to saying it's a return as Professor X. Fans have even been speculating that Deadpool might appear in the film! The sky is the limit following Spider-Man: No Way Home.

Spoilers for delisted Marvel Teaser Below

It seems like the latest trailer, which Marvel has deleted, is hinting at yet another cameo. This time around, we catch a brief glimpse of a distinctive shield. It looks like the shield of Captain America, but with a Union Jack emblazoned on it. That would point to Captain Carter appearing in the film.

No, her official name is actually not Captain Britain; that's a different person if he ever pops up in the MCU.

Captain Carter appeared in a few episodes of What If?, highlighting what would've happened if Peggy Carter underwent the Super-Soldier process rather than Steve Rogers. While her suit and shield are somewhat similar, Captain Carter is a little bolder than Rogers' Captain. In the animated series, the character was voiced by Hayley Atwell, reprising her role as Peggy from Captain America: The First Avenger and Agent Carter.

Would Atwell return to be the live-action iteration of Captain Carter? It's could be likely. She's worked with Marvel Studios multiple times and she's been in fighting fit shape for her role in the newly-titled Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1. Making a brief cameo in Doctor Strange should be right up her alley.

Her return in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness would also explain the recent Captain Carter comic series from Marvel Comics. That series started in March and details Carter's journey through the modern world, similar to Captain America when he was found by the Avengers. The comic, written by Jamie McKelvie and drawn by Marika Cresta, is currently on its second issue.

Assuming Atwell appears, she joins a pretty stacked cast. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness stars Benedict Cumberbatch, Benedict Wong, Elizabeth Olson, Xochitl Gomez Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Rachel McAdams, alongside whatever intriguing cameos Marvel decides to bring to the table. The film will be in theaters on May 6 and it's only the beginning. Marvel Studios boss Kevin Fiege recently said that he's heading into a retreat to block out the next decade of the MCU, and it's clear the multiverse and Strange will be a strong part of that story.

Mike Williams is a Freelance Writer for IGN.

Marvel Studios opened the gates to the multiverse in Loki and Spider-Man: No Way Home, but now those gates have been shattered. Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness features the good sorcerer in a caper across all realities. For fans, this means a heaping helping of cameos from other Marvel properties.

We've already seen a potential glimpse of a character cut from Avengers: Infinity War. We've also seen the zombified Doctor Strange from the animated What If? Series and Patrick Stewart confirmed that it is his voice in an earlier trailer, even if he won't commit to saying it's a return as Professor X. Fans have even been speculating that Deadpool might appear in the film! The sky is the limit following Spider-Man: No Way Home.

Spoilers for delisted Marvel Teaser Below

It seems like the latest trailer, which Marvel has deleted, is hinting at yet another cameo. This time around, we catch a brief glimpse of a distinctive shield. It looks like the shield of Captain America, but with a Union Jack emblazoned on it. That would point to Captain Carter appearing in the film.

No, her official name is actually not Captain Britain; that's a different person if he ever pops up in the MCU.

Captain Carter appeared in a few episodes of What If?, highlighting what would've happened if Peggy Carter underwent the Super-Soldier process rather than Steve Rogers. While her suit and shield are somewhat similar, Captain Carter is a little bolder than Rogers' Captain. In the animated series, the character was voiced by Hayley Atwell, reprising her role as Peggy from Captain America: The First Avenger and Agent Carter.

Would Atwell return to be the live-action iteration of Captain Carter? It's could be likely. She's worked with Marvel Studios multiple times and she's been in fighting fit shape for her role in the newly-titled Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1. Making a brief cameo in Doctor Strange should be right up her alley.

Her return in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness would also explain the recent Captain Carter comic series from Marvel Comics. That series started in March and details Carter's journey through the modern world, similar to Captain America when he was found by the Avengers. The comic, written by Jamie McKelvie and drawn by Marika Cresta, is currently on its second issue.

Assuming Atwell appears, she joins a pretty stacked cast. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness stars Benedict Cumberbatch, Benedict Wong, Elizabeth Olson, Xochitl Gomez Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Rachel McAdams, alongside whatever intriguing cameos Marvel decides to bring to the table. The film will be in theaters on May 6 and it's only the beginning. Marvel Studios boss Kevin Fiege recently said that he's heading into a retreat to block out the next decade of the MCU, and it's clear the multiverse and Strange will be a strong part of that story.

Mike Williams is a Freelance Writer for IGN.

Activision Blizzard is currently facing serious ongoing allegations of harassment and mistreatment of marginalized workers. To learn more, please visit our timeline as well as our in-depth report on the subject.

After teasing an announcement late last week, Infinity Ward has revealed the first official logo for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

Modern Warfare 2 is a sequel to 2019's Modern Warfare reboot, rather than a remake of 2009's original Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Besides the logo, no new details about the game were revealed.

You can check out the logo for yourself below.

#ModernWarfare2 pic.twitter.com/5wgtkph59W

— Infinity Ward (@InfinityWard) April 28, 2022

A sequel to 2019's Modern Warfare was officially announced back in February, alongside Warzone 2. Infinity Ward is taking the lead on Modern Warfare 2, but 11 different studios are reportedly working on the game in some capacity. Other reports say the campaign will feature U.S. special forces fighting Colombian drug cartels.

Modern Warfare 2 will seemingly mark the end of Call of Duty's streak of annual releases. Bloomberg reported that Call of Duty's planned 2023 release has been pushed back to 2024. This lines up with other rumblings saying Call of Duty devs are eager to move away from the annual release schedule.

Despite Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard, Modern Warfare 2 isn't set to be an Xbox exclusive. According to a report from earlier this year, Activision Blizzard has already committed to releasing three more Call of Duty games across multiple platforms, including PlayStation. After that, however, the series could live exclusively on Xbox.

Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN. You can find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.

Veteran developer Yuji Naka hit out at his former publisher, Square Enix, after a court case over his removal as director of Balan Wonderworld concluded.

Naka is best known for his work on Sonic The Hedgehog, Phantasy Star, and Nights into Dreams. In a series of tweets, Naka said that “Square Enix is no good” and that neither they nor co-developer Arzest are “companies that care about games or fans.”

Naka had served as the director of Balan for much of its development but was removed from the post about six months before the game was released. He resigned from Square Enix shortly after Balan was released and filed a lawsuit against the company. He also floated the idea of retiring from the games industry for good.

In his thread, Naka cited two reasons for his last-minute dismissal. First was he voiced concern about promotional work with a Youtuber, who was to perform and release sheet music for a piano arrangement of the game’s music. “I thought it strange that we would only release an arrangement of the game’s music, and furthermore use a ghostwriter to produce that arrangement,” wrote Naka. “I got in trouble for arguing that we release the original score.”

Naka also cited tensions between himself and Arzest surrounding his comments that the game was submitted in an unfinished state, with known issues left unfixed. “I believe that games should be made by working hard until the very end, until it's a good game that the team thinks their fans enjoy when they buy it,” he wrote.

バランワンダーワールド発売の約半年前にバランワンダーワールドのディレクターから外される業務命令が出されましたので、スクウェアエニックスに対して裁判所で訴訟を提起していました。裁判が終わり業務命令が現時点で効力は失われていると言う事ですので、お話したいと思います。#BalanWonderworld pic.twitter.com/9KE7hLqfor

— Yuji Naka / 中　裕司 (@nakayuji) April 28, 2022

Balan Wonderworld was announced in 2020 and hyped as the long-awaited reunion of Naka and fellow Sonic creator Naoto Ohshima, who is currently the head of Arzest. It was a critical and commercial failure upon release in March 2021, with our review calling it a “half-baked platformer” that was little more than a “jumble of endearing but incoherent ideas” and let down by “fundamentally bad choices.”

While mostly focusing his ire on Square Enix and Azrest, Naka also thanked those who provided “comments and fantastic illustrations” inspired by the game, and offered his “sincere apologies to those customers who bought the unfinished Balan Wonderworld.”

IGN has reached out to Square Enix for comment and you can read our independent translation of Naka's Twitter thread below.

Jack Richardson is a Freelance Writer for IGN.

Activision Blizzard shareholders voted today to approve the company's pending acquisition by Microsoft, but that doesn't mean it's a done deal, with several other hurdles remaining.

Announced via press release today, over 98% of shares voted in favor of the acquisition, which is expected to close sometime in the upcoming Microsoft fiscal year, which is between July 2022 and June 2023.

The voters approved the acquisition at $95 per share - considerably higher than the share price of late, which has been slowly dropping over the last month from the low-$80 range and has been hovering between $76 and $77 per share for the last few days.

The lowering share price ahead of the deal could indicate a lack of shareholder confidence that the deal will ultimately pass. Though the vote was overwhelming, a number of other possible challenges lie between now and the ultimate conclusion of the deal.

One key hurdle is the likelihood of an investigation by the Federal Trade Commission. Lina Khan, its recently-appointed head, has already shown a willingness to tackle big tech antitrust issues, including blocking an Nvidia acquisition and reopening the case against Meta. The deal will also require regulatory approvals abroad, including in China.

The Activision Blizzard acquisition comes at a time of ongoing turbulance within and around the company. The deal itself has prompted accusations of insider trading, but even more notable is the ongoing California lawsuit against the publisher accusing it of fostering a "frat boy culture" as well as subjecting female employees to unequal pay and sexual harassment.

Since the lawsuit, over 1,000 employees have called for the removal of CEO Bobby Kotick after reports that he knew about a number of the sexual harassment and assault allegations. Though it''s unclear if Kotick will remain post-acquisition, he stands to receive a $15 million "golden parachute" compensation if he departs. You can see a full timeline of events related to the lawsuit here.

Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.

Supermassive Games knows the appeal of a good horror story. Millions of the studio’s fans have jumped and screamed through Until Dawn and the Dark Pictures games. But the developer recognises that not everyone enjoys horror in the same way. That’s why The Quarry, Supermassive’s upcoming spiritual successor to Until Dawn, has multiple different game modes in order to allow a whole spectrum of horror fans to join in. It can, of course, be a choice-based story game. But, much like the spookiest of shadows, it can morph into other guises.

If you want, The Quarry can be a movie you just sit back and watch for ten hours. Or it can be a movie you direct, where you instruct your cast ahead of time on how they should respond to the adventure’s many threats. And, should you not want to endure the scares alone, The Quarry can even be a multiplayer game.

“The Quarry has probably the widest range of modes that we've done,” says director Will Byles. “We wanted to go and open this up to a much wider audience than just traditional gamers.”

While by its very nature horror will never genuinely have something for everyone, Supermassive Games is determined to offer the right options to allow as many people as possible to experience The Quarry. That effort begins in the main game itself, which as you’d expect plays much like Until Dawn, The Dark Pictures, and games from the likes of Telltale and Quantic Dream. Prominent among these games’ traditional mechanics are moments in which you must quickly react under stressful conditions, something Supermassive Games recognises may push some people away from playing.

Byles offers a hypothetical example of the way The Quarry addresses this problem. “I want to play it through, but QTEs really frighten me and I don't like those, they stress me out,” he says. “So you can turn those off.”

Supermassive has included on/off toggles for not just QTEs, but almost every major mechanic in the game. Combat, clues and evidence collection, dialogue interactions… all of these and more can be tailored to be interactive or automatic. This is an incredibly helpful addition, both in terms of accessibility and approachability. For some people, horror is an intense experience that’s difficult to endure. For others, a disability may make quick or precisie button inputs a challenge. These toggles ensure that The Quarry can be played by as many people as possible.

But what if you want to turn all those toggles off? The result is Movie Mode, and it’s exactly what it sounds like. The game plays itself, rendering the interactive movie just a movie. But that’s not to say you don’t have a little control over the experience.

“You can pick a style,” explains Byles. “You can have an ‘everybody lives’ movie, you can have an ‘everybody dies’ movie. Or you can have my favorite one, which is the ‘gore fest’ movie.”

If that’s not quite enough control for you, then there’s Director’s Chair mode. This is, once again, another mode where you watch The Quarry as a movie, but you get to make four important decisions for each of the nine playable characters before the story starts. What do they do under pressure? How do they approach conversations? Do they cope well in fight or flight situations? And how attentive are they to the world around them? These four aspects allow you to tailor each character into whatever kind of personality you want, from horror stereotypes to subversive trend buckers.

“Are they a bit clumsy? They would probably fail QTE's,” Byles says. “Are they argumentative? You set a whole bunch of these little parameters for every character and then you just let them go and see what happens in that movie… It's the closest to literally directing somebody. If you tell an actor to just be clumsy the whole time, that's what they'll do. That's the way they'll play it through.”

Real directors have the ability to shout “cut” and re-film a scene, something which choice-driven games have typically shied away from in order to provide a more genuine sense of consequence. However, The Quarry has a limited ‘lives’ system that will allow players to rewind a maximum of three times and make a different decision. To preserve the shocks and permanence of the branching story, this can only be done on a replay (or on your first playthrough by buying the Deluxe Edition).

“It's just in case you did something and you think, ‘Oh, I really didn't want to do that one’,” says Byles. “You get a choice and a little thing will pop out saying ‘Do you want to use one of your lives?’ There's also a little warning that when you die, it's not because you may have done something just now. It may be because you did something three chapters back. We have to give you a warning that if you do use your life, you’ve got to go all the way back to that point.”

The Dark Pictures Anthology introduced a welcome new addition to Supermassive’s horror formula: co-operative multiplayer. It returns for The Quarry in the form of Couch Play, which supports up to eight players. This pass-the-pad mode allows each player to control the game when perspective switches to their character. It’s a fun spin on a classic house party movie night, and Supermassive has been careful to ensure everyone can join in, even those who don’t usually play games.

“Each [character] can have accessibility options associated with it,” explains Byles. “So if you want to play with your gran who has never played with a controller before, you can dial hers right down and you can dial yours right up.”

Alongside this is online co-operative multiplayer, which makes a few deviations from tradition in order to make the interactive movie format work. Rather than a group controlling a different character each, a host player controls the game and up to seven other players can provide input on the choices made.

Supermassive Games has clearly put a lot of effort into diversifying the kind of experience The Quarry can be. For most people, it’s likely going to be a lot like Until Dawn. But for many others, it may well be remembered as an animated horror movie, a modern version of those early 2000s choose-your-own-adventure DVDs, or perhaps even the first horror game they were ever able to play.

“Stories in film are very vicarious,” says Byles as he reasons why it was important to make The Quarry playable by so many different kinds of people. “They're third person, you sit and watch them, and you empathise with a character. Games have a lot of agency and are much more about who you are. Mixing those two things together is a really, really good thing. Mixing this third person narrative with first person emotion is really, really powerful. I think a lot more people would appreciate it who normally would have a barrier about just playing a game.”

For more from The Quarry, check out our hands-on preview, our breakdown of how a creepy scene of the story was made, and how Supermassive wrote a game with 186 different endings.

Matt Purslow is IGN's UK News and Features Editor.

Obi-Wan Kenobi director Deborah Chow has revealed which movies and shows influenced the new Disney+ Star Wars series, citing two modern westerns as points of reference.

Speaking to Total Film for the new issue of the magazine, per GamesRadar, Chow shared more about her creative vision for the Obi-Wan Kenobi series and the surprise inspirations behind the first season, naming Andrew Dominik's The Assassination of Jesse James and John Hillcoat's The Proposition as two "gritty, poetic westerns" that she looked towards.

The Proposition, released in 2005, and The Assassination of Jesse James, released in 2007, blew out any signs of tumbleweed in the midst of a modern western film boom. Both films offered a very unique visual style, with the former set against some "sprawling and striking landscapes," and the latter capturing "the bleak reality and mythic allure of the Old West."

While the Star Wars franchise has often paid tribute to spaghetti westerns, it has also been heavily influenced by Japanese cinema and pop culture. One need only watch Akira Kurosawa's 1958 film The Hidden Fortress to see the seeds of what would become Star Wars. Chow admitted that she turned to the work of Kurosawa once more for Obi-Wan Kenobi.

"I love Kurosawa," Chow declared. "There's such a strong correlation for me between the Jedi and the Ronin – particularly in this period where all the Jedi are being hunted. I was really looking at what you do if you're the last samurai. You're more than just a warrior. There's also an ethical code that goes along with it, in a world that's vastly changed. That really had a pretty big effect on what we were trying to do."

Obi-Wan Kenobi picks up ten years after Revenge of the Sith, with Ewan McGregor returning to his Star Wars role (alongside Hayden Christensen as Darth Vader) for the first time in 17 years. McGregor said the series is arriving amid a wave of positivity for the prequels, though he admits he got more out of his Disney+ return than the "first three movies put together."

The Obi-Wan Kenobi series will premiere on Disney+ on May 27 with two episodes. Alongside McGregor and Christensen, the series stars Joel Edgerton, Bonnie Piesse, Moses Ingram, Indira Varma, Rupert Friend, and Sung Kang. Deborah Chow is directing the series and Joby Harold is the showrunner, with John Williams and Natalie Holt composing the score.

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