A new Hunger Games film will be released in 2026. Dedicated to Haymitch?

Will the ex-tribute played by Woody Harrelson be at the heart of Sunrise on the Reaping?

Suzanne Collins has just announced the upcoming publication of a new volume of its saga Hunger Games : meet in bookstores from March 18, 2025. Lionsgate immediately went further by scheduling its film adaptation for November 20, 2026.

This new book and this new film will share the same title: The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reapingwhich can be translated as “The Hunger Games: the sun rises over the reaping” (wheat, in the traditional expression, but there, it also works for the death of tributes…).

This will be the fifth volume of the literary saga started in 2008, and the second prequel: according toAssociated Pressits plot will take place approximately 40 years after the events of the prequel which has just been adapted for cinema, The Ballad of the Serpent and the Songbird.

Will we follow the youth of a certain Haymitch Abernathy? This is what fans of this dystopian universe assume, who adore this character from the saga, embodied in the cinema by Woody Harrelsonand whose past remains quite vague – the author reveals just enough to make him endearing and explain why he is so tormented.

We know that before Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence), he was the second winner of the Hunger Games from District 12, during the second Quarter Quell (a special Hunger Games celebrated every 25 years). He is the only one still alive at the start of the heroine's story from the first trilogy. Having become his mentor despite himself, this traumatized and alcoholic character gradually becomes a strong figure in this universe, and if we do not know precisely the details of his youth, we understand that he suffered enormously during his journey. .

40 years after the story of Coriolanus Snow told in the last opus, this corresponds exactly to these 50th Hunger Games. Both the book and the film should therefore take place 24 years before Katniss was designated as a tribute.

The author did not confirm this temporality, but here is what she told theAP about this new Hunger Games prequel:

“With Sunrise on the ReapingI was inspired by David Hume's ideas on implicit submission, and in his words, on 'the ease with which a majority of people are ruled by very few people.' The story will detail in greater depth the mechanics of propaganda, the power it gives by allowing you to control the way a story is told. The question 'is this real or not?' seems more and more pressing with each passing day.”

Now all that remains is to confirm all of this… and to cast Haymitch's new interpreter! Some Internet users already have their favorite: why not Tom Glynn-Carney (House of the Dragon) or Louis Hofmann (Dark) ? It's true that they share an air of resemblance with Woody Harrelson…

Woody Harrelson initially refused to star in The Hunger Games