'The Hunger Games' prequel 'Sunrise on the Reaping' is "pretty far along" according to producer

The Hunger Games producer Nina Jacobson opened up to Variety about the "interesting challenge" of casting a young Haymitch. "Because of this early manuscript not being published, we haven’t even been able to read actors for fear that sides could leak! We’ve been holding our breath for a long time, but I think that what we’re looking for in that role is, you don’t want somebody who’s impersonating Woody, but you want somebody who very credibly feels like they could be a young version of this character, before the trauma and grief and rage that the fallout of the Games create," she explained.

She then continued to say, "Nobody can be Woody Harrelson but Woody Harrelson. But you have to find that mischief that he has in him inherently and try to understand, if you turn back time from the man you meet at the beginning of The Hunger Games, who he was before all of that, and why he became that."

In addition to Harrelson, the dystopian franchise has included some incredible talent to bring these characters to life, including Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Stanley Tucci, Elizabeth Banks, Willow Shields, Sam Claflin, Jena Malone, Lenny Kravitz, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Julianne Moore, and many more. 

Jacobson: "From the moment that Katniss Everdeen says, 'I volunteer as tribute,' there’s an ability to see yourself in these characters in a way that is both aspirational and painful. Fans love the depth of her understanding of history, philosophy and these underlying ideas that run beneath so much of what we are experiencing today, culturally and globally. I think she has this incredible instinct for intimate character trauma, bringing to the surface ideas that we’re all struggling with. The books are smart. We’ve never treated them as a YA franchise. We’ve always treated them as general audience entertainment, with a young adult protagonist. We’ve never pandered. We’ve never dumbed it down. We’ve never tried to make this franchise easier than the books that we were given."

As for how far they are in the filmmaking process, she says that they're "pretty far along" considering Sunrise on the Reaping just came out. "We’re much further along than we would ever have been otherwise, without having this jump, because we went to work right away. None of it has been announced yet, but we have a great draft that we’re still doing work on. We’ve established our locations," she expressed. 

Jacobson: "It’s so rewarding to see why she told us the story in this order and the pieces that you’re able to stitch together now because we’ve gone back and then forward again. The connective tissue. There’s so much canon that comes to light, and now you understand because of the order that she went in."

She also recalls that she did not expect another book so soon after The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, which came out in 2020. The movie adaptation later came out in 2023 and starred Rachel Zegler and Tom Blyth as Lucy Gray Baird and a younger Coriolanus Snow, who was played by Donald Sutherland in the trilogy. 

"I’ve never actually worked on an adaptation like this, where you’re so far ahead of the book, and yet people are waiting for it," the producer shared. "[I got a] call saying, 'I have another book. I want you to read it. I want to know whether you think it’s a movie or not,' to me and [director Francis Lawrence]. We had to do a whole secret thing where I went to her longtime agent’s house and read it. There was one copy of the book that lived at his house. I had to go have my turn. Francis went and had his turn."

Sunrise on the Reaping is currently set for a November 2026 release.