A Dark New Chapter Begins in the First Trailer for “The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping”
Lionsgate has just dropped the first trailer for director Francis Lawrence’s The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, which opens with a young Haymitch Abernathy (Joseph Zada) sitting down across from President Snow (Ralph Fiennes). The white-haired ruler of Panem makes it clear he knows a thing or two about Haymitch, including his love for Lenore Dove Baird (Whitney Peak), but things have changed for Haymitch. Now, he’s on his own, as tends to happen to young people in Panem after they’re ripped from their homes and forced to compete in the Capitol’s brutal, bloody games. Hence, the next person we meet in the trailer is the young Caesar Flickerman (Kieran Culkin), the presenter of the Hunger Games and the man who interviews the tributes the night before the competition. There’s also an unrecognizable Glenn Close as Drusilla Sickle, a Capitol escort for District 12 and a veteran of the games since the 25th competition.
The ensemble that Lawrence has assembled for the sixth film in the franchise is formidable—we meet Jesse Plemons’ young Plutarch Heavensbee, the Head Gamemaker, and Elle Fanning’s young Effie Trinket, the flamboyant, high-fashion Capitol escort for District 12. “Shoulders back, big smile!” she tells the young tributes.
Sunrise on the Reaping is based on Suzanne Collins’ book, and begins on the morning of the reaping for the 50th Hunger Games, 24 years before the events in her 2008 debut novel “The Hunger Games.” The 50th Games are supersized—it has 100% more contestants than previous battles—yet not every tribute is ready and willing to kill and die for the Capitol. Maya Hawke’s Wiress says at one point in the trailer, “the arena, it’s a killing machine…but all machines can be broken.”
The first four films in the franchise were led, of course, by Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss, joined by Josh Hutcherson as Peeta, and Liam Hemsworth as Gale Hawthorne. Woody Harrelson played Haymitch Abernathy, Donald Sutherland was Coriolanus Snow, Elizabeth Banks was Effie Trinket, Stanley Tucci was Caesar Flickerman, and Philip Seymour Hoffman was Plutarch Heavensbee. This franchise has never struggled with star power.
The cast includes Kelvin Harrison Jr. as Beetee Latier, Lili Taylor as Mags Flanagan, Billy Porter as Magno Stift, Ben Wang as Wyatt Callow, and Iris Apatow as Prosperina Trinket. Two people we do not see in this trailer are Lawrence and Hutcherson, even though we know they’re reprising their roles. Their last trip to Panem was in 2015’s The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2. That ended with the two survivors married with children, a rare happy ending in Panem.
Lawrence directs from a script by Billy Ray, with Sunrise on the Reaping set to be the sixth film in a franchise that began back in 2012 with the Jennifer Lawrence-led The Hunger Games.
Check out the trailer here. The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping arrives in theaters on November 20, 2026.
Featured image: Ralph Fiennes as President Snow in The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Lionsgate
