Don’t fill up too fast: New Hunger Games movie based on an unwritten book announced

Hearing just how hard our little tummies were rumbling after the release of Hunger Games: The Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes, Lionsgate is preparing another heaping helping of Hunger Games, and they’re not even waiting for another book. Hot on the heels of Suzanne Collins’ surprise addition to the Hunger Games saga, Lionsgate has announced that a prequel film based on the upcoming book is already in the works. Corporate synergy is part of a balanced breakfast, after all.

Only hours ago, Collins announced a new Hunger Games novel, entitled Untitled Hunger Games Prequel Sunrise Of The Reaping, which will hit bookshelves on March 18, 2025. Not wasting any time, Lionsgate was quick to follow up: The adaptation of this unfinished book will hit theaters a year and a half later on November 20, 2026.

Reaping takes place 24 years before Katniss Everdeen made her first appearance in the games. The book will follow the “legendary” Second Quarter Quell, a.k.a. the 50th Hungry Games, which “looms large over the history of the Games, even into the time of Katniss Everdeen,” said Lionsgate chairman Adam Fogelson. The movie will be more or less an origin story for Woody Harrelson’s character Haymitch Abernathy. Of course, we assume Sunrise Of The Reaping will be a setup for Sunset Of The Sowing, which, no doubt, will be a horrible day for those early-rising reapers.

[via Variety]