The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes releases on digital platforms tomorrow, which means you can give your family the gift of forcing them to watch The Hunger Games this Christmas.
The new Hunger Games movie is coming to video-on-demand on Tuesday, December 19, just one month after the film opened in theaters. The film is still playing in select theaters for the rest of the week. This may come as a surprise to some, considering The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes made $291.6 million at the worldwide box office, off of an approximate $100 million production budget. Surely more folks would want to see it in theaters over the Christmas holiday, right?
But the quick push to digital platforms is par for the course in these post-COVID days. Most movies are released on digitally after a month or less in theaters, with some exceptions. Clearly Lionsgate hopes to make a few extra bucks from people buying and renting The Hunger Games on “premium” video-on-demand, which is industry jargon for charging you $20 or more to watch a movie at home shortly after its theatrical release.
Directed by Francis Lawrence, who’s helmed all of the Hunger Games films since Catching Fire, this new movie is a prequel to the first four films, based on the 2020 novel The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins. It tells the origin story of future Hunger Games villain, President Snow, played by newcomer Tom Blyth. Here’s how to watch The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes online, and when The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes may be on streaming.
The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes will be released on digital on Tuesday, December 19. You’ll be able to buy or rent the film on digital platforms like Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu, and more. The film will cost $24.99 to buy a digital copy, or $19.99 to rent. If you rent the film, you will have 48 hours to watch it after hitting play.
There is not yet a The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes streaming release date at this time. Even though you will be able to buy or rent the new Hunger Games movie online, you won’t be able to stream it on a subscription-based streaming platform just yet. That said, you can expect to see The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes on Starz eventually because that is the streaming platform owned by Lionsgate. Another Lionsgate film, The Blackening, came to stars on October 2, after opening in theaters on June 16. If The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes follows a similar release strategy, you can expect to see The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes streaming on Starz in March 2024, about 16 weeks after opening in theaters.
That said, Starz and Lionsgate are expected to split up next spring 2024, so it’s possible that The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes will end up on a different streamer. We’ll just have to wait and see.