Following the announcements about the upcoming novel The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping and its cinematic adaptation, fans want to know when it is set in the franchise’s timeline. Suzanne Collins, author of the bestselling Hunger Games series, and publisher Scholastic announced a new novel on June 6, 2024.
Titled The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, the book is scheduled for release on March 18, 2025. Coinciding with this announcement, Lionsgate, the distributor of The Hunger Games films, confirmed the development of a film adaptation. Lionsgate has set a tentative theatrical release date for November 20, 2026. These announcements have made the fans wonder about the book/film’s place in the overall Hunger Games timeline.
Here’s everything we have discovered about when The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping takes place and whether it’s a sequel or a prequel.
When does The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping take place?
The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping takes place 24 years before the events of The Hunger Games.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, it follows a young Haymitch Abernathy (Woody Harrelson portrays an older version in the first four films), as he participates and wins the 50th Hunger Games or the Second Quarter Quell for District 12.
Following the book’s announcement, Collins said (via Forbes), “With Sunrise on the Reaping, I was inspired by David Hume’s idea of implicit submission and, in his words, ‘the easiness with which the many are governed by the few.”
The author continued, “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.”
Is Sunrise on the Reaping a prequel or sequel?
The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping will be a prequel to the original book trilogy and the four films.
The first book in the series, The Hunger Games came out in 2008, followed by Catching Fire in 2009 and Mockingjay in 2010. The first two book’s cinematic adaptations debuted in theaters in 2012 and 2013, respectively, The Mockingjay adaptation was split into two parts, which premiered in 2014 and 2015. Collins published The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, a prequel set 64 years before The Hunger Games, in 2020, and its film adaptation premiered in 2023.
