The New ‘Hunger Games’ Prequel Promises to Be Anything but a Cheap Cash-Grab
Hunger Games definitely won the battle of the 2000s–2010s YA franchises. It gave us four respected books, five respected movies, and everyone went away quietly devastated by the story but pleased to have spent some time fighting alongside Katniss Everdeen.
Suzanne Collins, the author of the books, is likewise well respected. She’s maintained a pretty low profile since the first wave of interest in the Hunger Games franchise. You won’t find her lurking on social media trying desperately to recapture the glory days; she simply said what she wanted to say about war and death, said it again in the hard-hitting Hunger Games prequel The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, and then carried on living her best life. (She’s the anti-Rowling, if you will.)
Now Collins has decided that actually, there is a little more she wants to tell us about the world of Panem. But this is no cheap cash grab, a sadly all too common thing in this world of Disney/Marvel mega-franchises. Collins has actually put some thought into the world she created and has a good reason for returning to it.
Yep, today marked the announcement of a brand new Hunger Games book, Sunrise on the Reaping, which will explore a time in Panem history that was only ever referred to in the books. We’re heading now towards the Fiftieth Hunger Games, which so happened to be won by a character that we met as an adult in the very first Hunger Games story. That’s none other than Haymitch Abernathy, played by Woody Harrelson in the movie.
And speaking of the movies, yes, we’re getting a movie of Sunrise on the Reaping, too. Francis Lawrence is set to direct and it’ll be with us before the end of 2026. (Who will play young Haymitch is sure to be a matter of intense speculation until casting is announced.)
But even more exciting than the prospect of getting a Haymitch story is knowing what Collins has taken as her inspiration for this return to Panem. When she wrote the original Hunger Games book back in the ’00s, she was inspired by the coverage of the Iraq War, the rise of reality television, and the gladiator games of Roman history. Now she’s selected a different framework to base a novel around.
“With Sunrise on the Reaping, I was inspired by [Scottish Enlightenment philosopher] David Hume’s idea of implicit submission and, in his words, ‘the easiness with which the many are governed by the few,’” Collins said in a press release. “The story also lent itself to a deeper dive into the use of propaganda and the power of those who control the narrative. The question ‘Real or not real?’ seems more pressing to me every day.”
With the rise of deepfakes and AI, this sounds like a fascinating premise to build a Hunger Games story around. The book is due out on March 18, 2025, and promises to take a good long look at the systems that govern us right now.
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