The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping Gets a New Trailer, and Young Haymitch Is Already Planning a Rebellion
Lionsgate released a new trailer and two posters for The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping on September 16, offering the clearest look yet at Joseph Zada’s young Haymitch Abernathy as he’s dragged into the 50th Hunger Games, the brutal Second Quarter Quell that doubles the usual tribute count. Director Francis Lawrence’s prequel arrives in theaters and IMAX on November 20.
What the New Trailer Shows
The footage leans hard into Haymitch’s transformation, opening with a still hopeful 16 year old before the Games take that hope apart piece by piece. Inside the arena, he allies with fellow District 12 tribute Maysilee Donner, played by McKenna Grace, and gets pulled into a small group of tributes plotting to defy President Snow’s Capitol from the inside. By the end, Haymitch is risking everything to sabotage the Games themselves, planting the first seeds of the rebellion that eventually reaches Katniss Everdeen’s generation.
Twice the Tributes, Twice the Danger
Sunrise on the Reaping is set 24 years before the original Hunger Games film and adapts Suzanne Collins’s 2025 novel of the same name. Because it’s the Second Quarter Quell, the Capitol’s rule twist forces every district to send double its usual number of tributes, meaning Haymitch enters an arena with 48 competitors instead of the usual 24. Billy Ray, who wrote the screenplay for the very first Hunger Games film, returns to co-write the script with Michael Lesslie.
Meet the Cast Around Young Haymitch
Joseph Zada leads the film as young Haymitch Abernathy, with McKenna Grace as Maysilee Donner and Whitney Peak as Lenore Dove Baird. Ralph Fiennes reprises President Snow from The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, alongside Elle Fanning as a young Effie Trinket, Kieran Culkin as Caesar Flickerman, Jesse Plemons as Plutarch Heavensbee, Maya Hawke as Wiress, Kelvin Harrison Jr. as Beetee, and Lili Taylor as Mags. Glenn Close and Billy Porter round out the Capitol side of the cast as Drusilla Sickle and Magno Stift, the District 12 tributes’ escort and stylist, while Ben Wang plays fellow District 12 tribute Wyatt Callow. Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson also return as Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark for a brief framing scene set after the original trilogy, mirroring the structure of Suzanne Collins’s novel, in which an older Haymitch tells them his story.
Joseph Zada as a 16 year old Haymitch Abernathy, before the Hunger Games turn him into the mentor Katniss and Peeta will one day know
When You Can See It
The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping is the second prequel in the franchise, following 2023’s The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. It was filmed in Spain and Germany, and it hits theaters and IMAX screens on November 20, giving fans a full two months to catch up before the credits roll on Haymitch’s origin story.
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Picture Source: Lionsgate
