Sunrise on the Reaping Takes The Hunger Games Back to Haymitch’s Deadly Games

Lionsgate returns to Panem on November 20 with The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, adapted from Suzanne Collins’s 2025 bestseller. Newcomer Joseph Zada plays the teenage Haymitch Abernathy decades before he became Katniss’s hard-drinking mentor.

Francis Lawrence, director of every Hunger Games movie since Catching Fire, is back, working from a screenplay by Billy Ray, who co-wrote the original film.

The story

It is reaping day for the 50th Hunger Games, the Second Quarter Quell, which sends double the usual number of tributes into the arena. Haymitch is one of them. Fans know how the Games end for him; the film is about what winning costs.

The cast

• Joseph Zada as Haymitch Abernathy;
• Whitney Peak as Lenore Dove Baird;
• Mckenna Grace as Maysilee Donner;
• Ralph Fiennes as President Snow;
• Jesse Plemons as Plutarch Heavensbee;
• Elle Fanning as Effie Trinket;
• Kieran Culkin as Caesar Flickerman;
• Maya Hawke as Wiress;
• Kelvin Harrison Jr. as Beetee;
• Lili Taylor as Mags;
• Glenn Close, Billy Porter and Ben Wang.

The MPA also reports that Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson are back in the franchise for the first time since 2015.

The filmmakers

Longtime series composer James Newton Howard returns, and Color Force’s Nina Jacobson produces. Lionsgate showed the first footage in April 2026.

Release

Sunrise on the Reaping opens November 20, eleven years to the day after Mockingjay – Part 2.