With the upcoming The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping slowly gaining hype, director Francis Lawrence has come out to share his opinion on how they’ll replace Woody Harrelson’s Haymitch in the prequel. The movie will take inspiration from author Suzanne Collins’ next Hunger Games novel, which will hit the bookstores on March 18, 2025. As the project will focus on the 50th edition of The Hunger Games, its film adaptation will have the tough task of casting another actor in the role of a young Haymitch. In a recent discussion, Lawrence explained the approach his team would follow to accomplish this in a just manner.
Hunger Games director on how a young Haymitch will be cast for upcoming prequel
According to Francis Lawrence, who has helmed four of the five Hunger Games movies so far, the casting process for a younger Haymitch would be similar to that of President Snow in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.
In the Hunger Games prequel, Tom Blythe replaced the late Donald Sutherland to portray a younger version of Panem’s iconic dictator. While talking to ComicBook, Lawrence clarified that Haymitch’s recasting would follow the same ideals, stating, “How am I going to cast a young person who is believably going to become Donald Sutherland? Who’s going to have that sort of intelligence, sophistication, a little irreverence, gravitas, all of that. Who is going to embody and be believable in the fact that he’s going to turn into that guy and become the president of Panem? And it’s the same thing [with Haymitch].”
He then provided details on the traits an actor would need to step into Woody Harrelson’s shoes as Haymitch in the upcoming Hunger Games prequel. “It’s a search and you have to dig down and figure out what are the elements that make Woody so interesting, right? And some of it is humor. Some of it is intelligence, some of it is quirk, some of it is, there’s a darkness in him that gives him an edge. There’s a mischievousness, right,” Lawrence stated, before adding, “And we’re going to have to find somebody that has all of that.”
The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping is currently on track to premiere on November 20, 2026, a year after the launch of Collins’ original book.
