The New ‘Hunger Games’ Movie ‘Sunrise on the Reaping’—Here’s What We Know

Ready to go back to Panem? Hot off the success of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Hollywood is adapting Suzanne Collins’s new Hunger Games prequel novel, Sunrise on the Reaping, into a major motion picture.

And unlike Ballad, which only had a few characters who also appeared in the Katniss Everdeen saga, this story is full of familiar names. Here’s everything we know about the movie so far.

**What is Sunrise on the Reaping about?**

Sunrise on the Reaping is Haymitch Abernathy’s backstory. In the first Hunger Games book and movie, Haymitch is one of Katniss’s mentors, the only living Victor from her district. We find out that part of the reason Haymitch, an alcoholic, is so messed up is that the year he went into the arena, the Games demanded not two but four tributes from each district, which means he had to watch twice as many people die.

So imagine the regular Hunger Games trauma, but double it!

**When does Sunrise on the Reaping take place?**

It’s set during the Second Quarter Quell, a.k.a. the 50th Hunger Games, and 24 years before the events of the first Hunger Games book.

Who is in the cast?

Per People, Joseph Zada will star as Haymitch Abernathy, played by Woody Harrelson in the original Hunger Games movies, and Whitney Peak (Gossip Girl) will play his girlfriend, Lenore Dove Baird.

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Mckenna Grace is set to play Maysilee Donner, and Jesse Plemons is a young Plutarch Heavensbee, the enigmatic Gamemaker played by the late Philip Seymour Hoffman in the original films.

Plemons previously played Hoffman’s son in The Master, and the two actors’ similarities and talents make Plemons, in this writer’s humble opinion, the best and only choice for the role.

Variety reports that Francis Lawrence (no relation to Jennifer), who directed all but the first Hunger Games movie, will helm Sunrise on the Reaping.