Although it won’t hit retail until spring 2025, Suzanne Collins’ fifth Hunger Games book Sunrise on the Reaping is already in the big-screen pipeline at Lionsgate.
Slated to premiere in North America on November 20, 2026, The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping will extend the dystopian teen franchise that has collectively earned US$3.3 billion at the box office to six films. (Scholastic’s first four books in the publishing series have also sold an impressive 100 million-plus copies worldwide since 2008.)
Longtime producer Nina Jacobson is returning and will produce the new film with Brad Simpson under their LA-based Color Force banner (Diary of a Wimpy Kid). Meredith Wieck and Scott O’Brien are overseeing the project for Lionsgate. And Francis Lawrence, who has directed every Hunger Games film except the first one, is in talks to helm this one as well.
Scholastic is currently taking pre-orders for Sunrise in advance of its March 18, 2025 launch in the US, Canada, the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. Set 24 years before the events of the first book, this new prequel novel revolves around the 50th Hunger Games, from which fan-favorite character Haymitch emerged as the victor.
The Hunger Games saga explores a world where kids and teens are chosen from various districts to participate in violent televised fights. Despite dealing with tough themes like war and classism, Collins’ YA books have developed a massive following of tween/teen fans, as well as earning accolades such as the California Young Reader Medal and Notable Children’s Book of 2008.
The IP’s most recent movie installment was last year’s prequel pic The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, based on a same-name novel that Scholastic published in 2020. It generated US$337 million in worldwide ticket sales against a US$100-million budget, but this represented a decline compared to the performance of the four previous Jennifer Lawrence-led movies released from 2012 to 2015.
Pictured: The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013)
