Scholastic Announces Newest Hunger Games Novel, Sunrise On The Reaping
Suzanne Collins, the brains behind the infamous The Hunger Games series, will be revisiting the post-apocalyptic world of Panem to tell a new story.
On June 6, Scholastic announced the release of Sunrise on the Reaping, Collins’ fifth and newest addition to The Hunger Games series.
While most details about the book are a mystery, fans can mark their calendars for its release on March 18, 2025. The movie tie-in is set for a Nov. 20, 2026 release date.
Lionsgate Films, the company behind releasing the first five movies in the The Hunger Games franchise, is also set to create the Sunrise on the Reaping movie. Francis Lawrence, who directed Ballad of Songbird and Snakes, Hunger Games: Mockingjay [Part 1 and 2] and Hunger Games: Catching Fire, will also return to direct the newest addition to the franchise.
It will take place during the Second Quarter Quell, or the Fiftieth Hunger Games, 24 years before the first novel occurs.
To fans of the series, it is well-known that the beloved Haymitch Abernathy is the mentor of Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark—the protagonists of the main trilogy—and the victor of the Second quarter quell.
A typical Hunger Games has 24 tributes, a boy and a girl from each of the 12 districts, who fight to survive in an arena until only one is left standing. However, the Quarter Quells come once every twenty-five years and always have a twist. The Second Quarter Quell has double the tributes and a poisonous arena.
As fans eagerly await the book and movie, theories and fan casts for characters like Haymitch Abernathy have taken over the internet.
Some fans speculate the book might not be about Haymitch because Collins has already explained the critical points about Haymitch’s games in the second Hunger Games sequel, Catching Fire.
So, it seems unlikely that she would rehash this in a new book when there are 47 other characters to highlight, excluding characters in the Capital, as discussed in Ballad of Songbird and Snakes.
However, in a statement released by Scholastic, Collins said she was “inspired by David Hume’s idea of implicit submission and, in his words, the easiness with which [the few govern the many]” and that “the question ‘real or not real?’ [seemed] more pressing to [her] every day.”
With more than 100 million copies of the four books in the series in print and digital format and foreign publishing rights in fifty-four languages, Collins has proven time and time again that she can create brilliant characters and carefully crafted stories. Sunrise on the Reaping will be no different.
