Sunrise on the Reaping: How It Connects to Jennifer Lawrence’s Hunger Games Saga

We just got our first real look at The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, and Lionsgate didn’t wait around. The trailer landed on November 20, 2025 — a full year ahead of release — which tells you how big they’re betting on this one.

Spoiler alert: This digs into Suzanne Collins’s new novel and what the movie seems to be adapting. If you want to go in cold, this is your off-ramp.

What this prequel actually covers

This isn’t Katniss’s story. Sunrise on the Reaping jumps back 24 years before the 2012 film and locks in on Haymitch Abernathy — yes, the cranky, perpetually-soused mentor Woody Harrelson played so well. Here, he’s young, unbroken, and about to be thrown into the 50th Hunger Games, aka the Second Quarter Quell. Australian actor Joseph Zada takes over as Haymitch, and the trailer teases the pieces that eventually grind him down into the guy we met in The Hunger Games.

Collins’s book fills in the brutal gaps the originals only hinted at: Haymitch loses his mother, his brother, his girlfriend, and a close friend during and after the arena. He had avoided alcohol before the Games; the trauma is what pushes him over that edge for good. The movie looks set to follow that arc pretty closely.

How Haymitch connects back to Katniss

This is one of the more interesting angles. Before all the tragedy, Haymitch was tight with Burdock Everdeen — yes, Katniss’s dad. Burdock teaches Haymitch how to set snares, which turns out to be a literal lifesaver in the arena. He’s also the one who taught Katniss how to hunt with a bow. So both future victors learned how to survive from the same guy. Small world, miserable country.

There’s also a clear explanation for a couple of long-running details:

- Why Haymitch calls Katniss 'sweetheart': in the book, he affectionately called his fellow District 12 tribute Louella McCoy 'sweetheart.' Louella dies before the 50th and gets replaced, but Katniss later reminds him of her.

- Where the Mockingjay pin really came from: it belonged to Maysilee Donner, one of Haymitch’s fellow tributes in this Quarter Quell. A maker named Tam Amber crafted the pin for Maysilee, and Haymitch is the one who tells her what it symbolizes. In the original books, Katniss gets the pin from Madge Undersee (Maysilee’s niece). The movies cut Madge entirely and had Katniss pick it up from Greasy Sae, so I’m curious how this film threads that needle on screen.

The Second Quarter Quell twist

The 50th Games doubled the headcount — four tributes per district. It’s a nasty rule change Collins came up with, and the trailer leans into how chaotic that makes the arena. Another wrinkle: Haymitch was neither reaped nor a volunteer. He got dragged in as a replacement after the original male tribute, Woodbine, tried to run and was killed by Peacekeepers. Haymitch was chosen because he literally threw himself in front of his girlfriend, Lenore Dove, when she was attacked after trying to help Woodbine’s mother. Heroic and doomed — that’s very Haymitch.

Threading in The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes

The prequel doesn’t just nod at President Snow; it ties back to Ballad in a meaningful way. Remember the Covey family from that story — Lucy Gray Baird, Maude Ivory Baird, and Barb Azure Baird? Lucy (Rachel Zegler) won the 10th Hunger Games under Snow’s mentorship. Here, Haymitch’s girlfriend Lenore Dove is revealed to be Lucy’s descendant. On top of that, Burdock Everdeen apparently has Covey cousins on his mother’s side, which quietly suggests Katniss could be part Covey too. It’s a surprising bit of connective tissue, and it makes Panem feel even more tangled than we thought.

Familiar faces, new faces, and a couple of surprises

The trailer flashes a lot of new takes on old roles. Effie Trinket shows up younger and, notably, working as District 12’s stylist — which is a shift from her later gig as escort/handler. A baby-faced Caesar Flickerman is already showboating, and Plutarch Heavensbee appears way before his Gamemaker days, just a guy behind a camera in the Capitol. We also meet the mentors who later help Katniss in Catching Fire — Beetee, Wiress, and Mags — here advising Haymitch first.

And yes, President Snow is back again. Between Donald Sutherland (original series) and Tom Blyth (Ballad), you’d think the role couldn’t get any icier. Enter Ralph Fiennes.

Who’s playing who

• Joseph Zada - Haymitch Abernathy
• Mckenna Grace - Maysilee Donner
• Ben Wang - Wyatt Callow
• Molly McCann - Louella McCoy
• Iona Bell - Lou Lou
• Whitney Peak - Lenore Dove
• Ralph Fiennes - President Coriolanus Snow
• Jesse Plemons - Plutarch Heavensbee (as a young Capitol cameraman)
• Elle Fanning - Effie Trinket (as District 12’s stylist)
• Kieran Culkin - Caesar Flickerman
• Glenn Close - Drusilla Sickle (Capitol chaperone for District 12 tributes)
• Billy Porter - Magno Stift
• Iris Apatow - Proserpina Trinket (Effie’s younger sister)
• Kelvin Harrison Jr. - Beetee Latier
• Maya Hawke - Wiress
• Lili Taylor - Mags Flanagan

Fans are already buzzing about Glenn Close. She’s buried under vivid Capitol glam as Drusilla Sickle and looks nothing like Glenn Close — in a good way.

Behind the camera

Francis Lawrence is back to direct. He took over after the first movie and steered the next three, plus The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes. He talked about the challenge of finding a young Haymitch in late 2024, and the thinking tracks with how they cast Snow for Ballad:

We had to dig down and figure out the elements that made Woody Harrelson interesting. Some of it is humor. Some of it is intelligence. Some of it is quirk. Some of it is, there’s a darkness in him that gives him an edge. It’s not somebody that just looks like him, or is going to study Woody Harrelson and just act like him. When Tom Blyth played Donald Sutherland, he wasn’t doing an impersonation. We had to find somebody that was believable that you could be like, 'Oh, okay, I see how this guy over 70 years could turn into [President Snow].'

Screenwriter Billy Ray is also back, adapting Collins’s new novel for the screen.

One more thing the book sets up

In the novel’s epilogue, an older Haymitch finally tells Katniss and Peeta what happened to him. If the movie keeps that device, it’s an easy path to bring Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, and even Woody Harrelson back for a coda. No promises — but the door’s there.

Release and where to watch the rest

The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping hits U.S. theaters on November 20, 2026.

If you want to revisit the series before then, the Hunger Games movies are streaming on HBO Max, and The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes is on The Roku Channel.