'The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes' trailer out now: Watch here

The official trailer for the highly anticipated prequel "The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes" has arrived!

Based on the 2020 novel of the same name by bestselling author Suzanne Collins, the film takes place years before the trilogy that starred Jennifer Lawrence as heroine Katniss Everdeen.

Here, Tom Blyth stars as an 18-year-old Coriolanus Snow -- the man who became Donald Sutherland's evil President Snow in the original films -- and "West Side Story" star Rachel Zegler plays Lucy Gray Baird, a tribute from District 12.

EGOT winner Viola Davis plays diabolical head gamemaker Dr. Volumnia Gaul. In the trailer, she says of the Games, "What happens in there -- fueled with the terror of becoming prey -- see how quickly we become predator? See how quickly civilization disappears?"

Snow, meanwhile, has to contend with "Game of Thrones" Emmy winner Peter Dinklage as Casca Highbottom, the powerful creator of the Hunger Games. "Do you hear that, boy? It's the sound of Snow falling," he taunts his eventual successor.

For Lucy Gray, the studio teases, "[A]fter she grabs Panem's attention by defiantly singing during the reaping ceremony, Snow thinks he might be able to 'turn the odds in their favor.'"

The synopsis continues, "Uniting their instincts for showmanship and newfound political savvy, Snow and Lucy Gray's race against time to survive will ultimately reveal who is a songbird, and who is a snake."

Lucy Gray appears as the film's moral compass. "There's natural goodness built into us all," she says in the trailer. "We can step across that line into evil, or not."

The trailer also shows Jason Schwartzman preening as "Lucky" Flickerman, the predecessor of Stanley Tucci's host Caesar Flickerman from the original movies.

Francis Lawrence, who directed the last three films in the series, returns to direct "The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes," which debuts in theaters worldwide on Nov. 17.