After the film release of The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes in 2023, it seems the mid-2020s Hunger Games resurgence is only growing stronger. The series’ creator, Suzanne Collins, is now working on a fifth book, The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, slated to release on March 18, 2025. But the news gets better for fans of Collins’ dystopian universe: A movie adaptation of the new book is already on its way.
In a press release, Adam Fogelson of Lionsgate said of the upcoming film: “Suzanne Collins is a master storyteller and our creative north star. We couldn’t be more fortunate than to be guided and trusted by a collaborator whose talent and imagination are so consistently brilliant. We know Hunger Games fans worldwide will be spellbound by where Suzanne has focused this next extraordinary story. The Second Quarter Quell is legendary and looms large over the history of the Games, even into the time of Katniss Everdeen a quarter-century later. Like fans around the globe, we are eagerly anticipating this exciting return to Panem.”
While it will be some time until we get to see the Districts on the screen again, here’s what to look forward to when Sunrise on the Reaping at last arrives.
When does The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping come out?
Sunrise on the Reaping will hit theaters on November 20, 2026.
On June 6, the official Hunger Games Instagram account shared the news, mere hours after Scholastic announced that Collins was at work on another book.
“Welcome to the Second Quarter Quell,” the caption reads.
What will The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping be about?
The fifth installment of The Hunger Games series will be a second prequel, this time focused on protagonist Haymitch Abernathy. Fans will remember Haymitch as Katniss and Peeta’s mentor during their games, as well as the second-ever victor from District 12 (behind Lucy Gray Baird). Sunrise on the Reaping takes place 40 years after the events in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes and will show Haymitch’s backstory, as well as his time in the Quarter Quell, well before the events of the main Hunger Games trilogy.
“Sunrise on the Reaping will revisit the world of Panem twenty-four years before the events of The Hunger Games, starting on the morning of the Reaping of the Fiftieth Hunger Games, also known as the Second Quarter Quell,” the Scholastic account tweeted.
Author Suzanne Collins also shared that Scottish philosopher David Hume served as one of her inspirations for her newest work.
“With Sunrise on the Reaping, I was inspired by David Hume’s idea of implicit submission and, in his words, ‘the easiness with which the many are governed by the few,’” Collins revealed in a statement. “The story also lent itself to a deeper dive into the use of propaganda and the power of those who control the narrative. The question ‘Real or not real?’ seems more pressing to me every day.”
This story will be updated.