The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping Trailer Turns Haymitch’s Past Into a Must-See Event
Lionsgate has released the first official trailer for The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, giving the franchise its clearest look yet at the story of a young Haymitch Abernathy. Set 24 years before Katniss Everdeen’s first trip into the arena, the film revisits Panem at the time of the 50th Hunger Games, also known as the Second Quarter Quell, when the Capitol forced twice as many tributes into the competition. Joseph Zada leads the prequel as Haymitch, with the trailer positioning him less as a future fan favorite and more as a frightened, sharp-eyed teenager being pulled into a system already designed to break him.
Photo Credit: LIONSGATE
The trailer leans into dread early, opening on Haymitch opposite President Snow, now played by Ralph Fiennes, before widening into the familiar machinery of Panem’s pageantry and violence. From there, the preview starts threading in several of the film’s younger franchise figures, including Elle Fanning as Effie Trinket, Kieran Culkin as Caesar Flickerman, Jesse Plemons as Plutarch Heavensbee, Maya Hawke as Wiress, and McKenna Grace as Maysilee Donner—establishing yet another star-studded roster.
Haymitch Steps to the Center
That character-shaping story gives the trailer a different kind of pull than the earlier Hunger Games films. Instead of building around a reluctant symbol in the making, Sunrise on the Reaping appears more interested in the conditions that shaped the man audiences already know: the fear, the performance, and the calculated cruelty behind the Capitol’s control. The footage also hints that this installment will lean hard into the idea of resistance forming inside the machine itself, especially as Haymitch begins to understand the scale of what he is trapped inside.
The film is directed by Francis Lawrence, who previously helmed several entries in the franchise, with a script by Billy Ray adapting Suzanne Collins’ best-selling 2025 novel.
The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping is set to arrive in theaters on November 20, 2026.
