The second prequel book in ‘The Hunger Games’ series was released on March 18, 2025 and the film adaptation arrives in November 2026
Credit: Michael Tullberg/Getty; Scholastic/Amazon
NEED TO KNOW
- Producer Nina Jacobson says reading Suzanne Collins’ newest Hunger Games prequel left her deeply emotional and “utterly wrecked”
- The novel explores the backstory of characters like Haymitch Abernathy, revealing his youthful optimism and innocence before tragedy
- Sunrise on the Reaping, the sixth film in the franchise, will release in theaters on Nov. 20, 2026
Sunrise on the Reaping left producer Nina Jacobson “utterly wrecked” when she first read it.
Speaking with PEOPLE ahead of the release of the upcoming film adaptation of Suzanne Collins’ fifth novel set in the world of Panem, Jacobson reveals that she had “a hint” that the novel was coming, but says “we weren’t expecting it anytime soon.”
“And then we get the call, go to her agent’s house, there’s one copy of the book, a manuscript. You go, and you have your sittings, and you sit down, and you read it. And I sat it down and devoured it, and I was destroyed by it,” Jacobson tells PEOPLE, adding that it left her “utterly wrecked.”
Jacobson serves as a producer for the upcoming film, which releases in theaters on Nov. 20, 2026. It’ll be the sixth in the franchise she has worked on, serving as a producer on all five of the previous installments, the most recent being The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes in 2023.
Credit: Lester Cohen/WireImage
“There was so much that made me really appreciate the order of the books that she had done,” she adds, noting how the newest prequel novel added deeper context to Beetee and Plutarch’s characters. “And the emotion for me when I finished the book of understanding for the people in the resistance who are surrounding and behind and working with Katniss from Catching Fire on, that they have been at it until she comes along. They have been resisting and losing for 24 years and made so many sacrifices, lost so many times, but yet they kept going.”
Director Francis Lawrence tells PEOPLE the novel made him see Haymitch Abernathy in a different light. Where viewers watched the drunk District 12 victor coach Katniss and Peeta through the 74th and 75th Hunger Games before the revolution that takes place in Mockingjay, Sunrise on the Reaping details the young man he was before the events of the game that landed him a rare spot in the Victor’s Village.
“It both surprised me and didn’t surprise me to just see how young and youthful and optimistic and hopeful he was,” Lawrence says. “You always sort of have hints from the earlier stories of the family that he had and the girlfriend that he had, and that’s not really a mystery — but to see how innocent he is in a way was surprising.”
Credit: Murray Close/Lionsgate
“I think [Haymitch is] just a very relatable young guy who’s like, ‘I’ve got a girl I love. I’ve got a family I love,’” Jacobson adds. “When his mom says to fill the cistern, he just assumes he’s not going to go to the Hunger Games. He’s an optimist.”
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“In order to hold onto that little sense of peace around him, willing, as Lenore Dove brings up to him, to just go along with it and to assume that there’s nothing he can do about it. And so I think that was really striking to see,” she continues.
Sunrise on the Reaping will hit theaters on Nov. 20, 2026.
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