It’s a big day for fans of The Hunger Games as Lionsgate has announced a film adaptation of Sunrise on the Reaping, the next Hunger Games prequel novel by author Suzanne Collins.
Lionsgate confirmed the film adaptation of Sunrise on the Reaping releases on November 20, 2026. Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson, producers on the previous Hunger Games films, have returned for the next installment, while Francis Lawrence, who directed four of the five Hunger Games films beginning with Catching Fire, is in talks to direct.
Sunrise on the Reaping (A Hunger Games Novel)
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“Suzanne Collins is a master storyteller and our creative north star,” Lionsgate Motion Picture Group chair Adam Fogelson said. “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.”
Sunrise on the Reaping is another prequel in Collins’ dystopian series, set 40 years after The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes but 24 years before the events of the original Hunger Games novel. It begins on the morning of the Reaping of the Fiftieth Hunger Games (aka the Second Quarter Quell). Fans of the franchise will remember this is the year Hunger Games character Haymitch Abernathy won.
While it seems like a quickfire film adaptation of the next Hunger Games novel just hours after it was announced, Lionsgate had said in late 2015 that it was interested in making Hunger Games prequel films.
To that end, last year Lionsgate released a film version of Collins’ 2020 prequel novel The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, starring Rachel Zegler and Tom Blyth. The film was a hit for Lionsgate, grossing $337.4 million at the global box office.
“The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes rushes through a rich story that needs more time for its characters’ conflicts and manipulations to feel earned,” we wrote in our review of The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.
Taylor is a Reporter at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.
