GoKawiilThe Hunger Games franchise, based on the bestselling novels by Susan Collins, has grossed over $3.4 billion at the global box office across five films and shows no sign of slowing down any time soon. Lionsgate just dropped an extended teaser for the sixth film, Sunrise on the Reaping—a sequel to 2023’s Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes and a prequel leading into the events of the first film, The Hunger Games (2012).
(Some spoilers for prior films in the franchise below.)
Confession: While I was a fan of the first two films, my interest in the Hunger Games franchise flagged a bit after that. It didn’t help that the first prequel, Ballad, was the weakest film in the franchise, although it still raked in $349 million globally at the box office. That film told the backstory of future Panem President Coriolanus Snow (played by the late Donald Sutherland in the first four films) as a young man (Tom Blyth). Set in the earliest days of the Games, we see his gradual transformation from well-meaning mentor to a tribute named Lucy Gray (Rachel Zegler), to conniving villain willing to do pretty much anything for power.
But my hopes have been much higher for Sunrise on the Reaping; the novel, published last year, was a return to top form and sold 1.5 million copies the first week alone, dwarfing sales of Collins’ prior novels in the series. This time, the main protagonist is a young Haymitch Abernathy, future District 12 mentor to Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) and Peeta (Josh Hutcherson). Woody Harrelson’s older Haymitch is a fan favorite, and who wouldn’t want to hear the story of how he became his jaded, drunkenly cynical (yet secretly hopeful) self?