Lionsgate has unveiled a brand-new trailer and fresh posters for The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, offering audiences a much closer look at the brutal Games that helped shape the future of Panem.
Set 24 years before the events of the original The Hunger Games, the upcoming prequel follows a teenage Haymitch Abernathy, played by Joseph Zada, as he is forced into the 50th Hunger Games — an event that becomes known as the Second Quarter Quell.
Unlike the standard Games, the Second Quarter Quell comes with a devastating new rule: each district must send four tributes instead of two, doubling the number of young people forced into the arena. The latest trailer puts the scale and brutality of the competition front and centre.
Haymitch enters the Games alongside fellow District 12 tribute Maysilee Donner, played by Mckenna Grace, with the pair forming an unlikely alliance as they attempt to survive an arena designed to turn the tributes against one another.
But survival isn’t Haymitch’s only objective.
The new footage hints at the beginnings of the resistance that will eventually grow into the rebellion against the Capitol. Haymitch finds himself increasingly unwilling to simply play by the Capitol’s rules, placing him directly in the sights of President Snow, portrayed in the film by Ralph Fiennes.
The trailer also offers glimpses of Haymitch’s relationships, the other tributes and the increasingly dangerous circumstances surrounding the Games. As the competition intensifies and Haymitch begins losing people close to him, his determination to fight back becomes impossible to ignore.
The story is adapted from Suzanne Collins’ bestselling 2025 novel Sunrise on the Reaping. Francis Lawrence, who directed the previous Hunger Games films beginning with Catching Fire, returns behind the camera. The screenplay comes from Billy Ray and Michael Lesslie.
The impressive ensemble cast also includes Jesse Plemons, Glenn Close, Kieran Culkin, Elle Fanning, Maya Hawke, Whitney Peak, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Ben Wang, Lili Taylor and Billy Porter, alongside Zada, Grace and Fiennes.
The new posters released alongside the trailer continue to tease the divide between the tributes and the Capitol, reflecting the growing conflict that sits at the heart of Haymitch’s story.
For longtime fans, the film provides the opportunity to see a character first brought to life by Woody Harrelson in the original series before Haymitch became the hardened mentor audiences know. It also explores the experiences that ultimately shaped the man who would later guide Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark.
The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping is scheduled to arrive in cinemas and IMAX on November 20, 2026.
