‘Black Widow’ Meets ‘Killing Eve’ in HBO Max’s Official Smash Hit

Published Nov 8, 2026, 3:30 PM EST

In over three years at Collider, senior author Jake has now penned over 4000 articles covering a wide range of TV and film for the resources, lists, utilities, news, and interview teams. Alongside interviewing stars such as Selin Hizli, Rose Ayling-Ellis, Harlan Coben, and Chelsea Peretti, Jake was lucky enough to visit the set of Aardman and Netflix's Wallace and Gromit: A Vengeance Most Fowl in 2024, getting the chance to chat with four-time Academy Award winner Nick Park and Merlin Crossingham. Jake has also worked for other publications, including Agents of Fandom. You can also hear Jake every week as the resident film and TV journalist on Track Radio. 

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One of the biggest fantasy films of the year is now just a couple of weeks away. On November 20, The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping continues the prequel stories set in the Hunger Games universe and follows The Ballad of Songbird and Snakes. Set on the morning of the reaping of the 50th Hunger Games, also known as the Second Quarter Quell, Sunrise on the Reaping will follow a young Haymitch Abernathy (Joseph Zada, previously played by Woody Harrelson) as he is selected from District 12.

Based on the latest entry in Suzanne Collins' dystopian book series, which broke a series record by selling over 1.5 million copies globally in its first week, Sunrise on the Reaping has assembled a typically stacked cast for the franchise, with Zada joined by the likes of Elle Fanning, Mckenna Grace, Jesse Plemons, Ralph Fiennes, Glenn Close, Whitney Peak, Kieran Culkin, and others. The most eye-catching casting for the film is that of Jennifer Lawrence, who is joining original co-star Josh Hutcherson in reprising their career-making roles for the film, having mentioned on a podcast that stepping back on set was emotional.

How have Hunger Games fans been passing the time before Katniss returns? By checking out one of Lawrence's other badass performances, of course. Released in 2018, three years after Lawrence's last Hunger Games appearance, Red Sparrow turned the actress into a mix between Marvel’s Black Widow and Villanelle from the hit series Killing Eve. Eight years later, ahead of Sunrise on the Reaping, Lawrence's spy thriller is a hit again. At the time of writing, Red Sparrow is one of the ten most-watched movies on HBO Max in the U.S.

COLLIDERInteractive

Impact

Action/Quizzes/Your Franchise

Collider QuizWhat Action Series
Would You Thrive In?8 Questions · 4 FranchisesFour franchises. Four completely different ideas of what a hero is: the professional with a code, the family that never leaves anyone behind, the man who does his own stunts, and the guy who simply refuses to go down. Only one of them runs on your particular brand of trouble. Eight questions will tell you which one you would survive.The Four

Wick

Fast

Mission

Die Hard

Find Your Franchise

Beat 01 / 080% Shot

Question 01PRESENCE

01How does a room know you've walked into it?Every action hero arrives differently. Some of them arrive before they arrive.

ASomeone recognizes me, and the temperature in the room drops without a single word being said.BLoudly and warmly. I arrive with my people, and we're already laughing about something.CI'm the one who told everybody where to stand. I walked this room twice before anyone else arrived.DBy accident. I wasn't supposed to be here, and now I'm the only one who can do anything about it.

← BackPick one, then Next

Next Question

Beat 02 / 0812% Shot

Question 02COMBAT

02It turns physical. What does your fighting look like?Choreography is character. Yours says something about you.

AEconomical and devastating. Trained technique, no wasted motion, finished before most people notice it started.BLoud, heavy and weirdly joyful. I'm not elegant, I hit like a truck, and I always have backup.CTo plan, until the plan breaks. Then I improvise at full sprint and refuse to stop moving.DBadly, honestly, and with a lot of swearing. I take more punishment than I deal and I still don't go down.

← BackPick one, then Next

Next Question

Beat 03 / 0825% Shot

Question 03CREW

03Who is standing beside you when it starts?Some franchises are built on a team. Others are built on one person walking in alone.

ANobody. I have contacts, favors and people who owe me, but when it begins I work alone.BEveryone. My people are the entire point, and I'd trade the whole mission for any one of them.CA small hand-picked team I trust completely, and I'd still take the worst part of the job myself.DA voice on the other end of a radio and a building full of people who don't know I exist.

← BackPick one, then Next

Next Question

Beat 04 / 0838% Shot

Question 04PRESSURE

04It has gone badly wrong. What keeps you upright?Act two exists to find out what you're really made of.

AFocus, commitment and sheer will. Grief is fuel if you point it in the right direction.BThe people counting on me. I don't appear to have a limit when it's family on the line.CRefusing to accept the odds. Somebody has to do the impossible part, and it's going to be me.DSpite, mostly. And a growing sense that these people picked the wrong building.

← BackPick one, then Next

Next Question

Beat 05 / 0850% Shot

Question 05WHEELS

05There's a vehicle. What are you driving, and how?No action franchise has ever survived without a car chase. This one is yours.

AA black muscle car I am unreasonably attached to, and I will dismantle an entire empire over it.BSomething impossibly modified, at impossible speed, off an impossible ramp. Physics is a suggestion.CA motorbike at full throttle through a city I memorized last night. And then off a cliff.DA borrowed car, badly, while somebody in the passenger seat politely asks me to slow down.

← BackPick one, then Next

Next Question

Beat 06 / 0862% Shot

Question 06ORDERS

06How do you feel about the people giving the orders?There is always an institution. There is rarely a good one.

AThere are rules and I respect them absolutely, right up until somebody breaks one against me.BI don't take orders. I take care of people, and everything else tends to sort itself out.CI serve the mission, not the memo. If my people are in danger, the orders come second.DThey're in a van outside telling me what I'm doing wrong while I'm the one standing on broken glass.

← BackPick one, then Next

Next Question

Beat 07 / 0875% Shot

Question 07MOTIVE

07Underneath all of it, what are you doing this for?The stunts are the reason people come. This is the reason they stay.

ASomething was taken from me that can't be replaced, and I've been settling that account ever since.BBelonging. I built a family out of people who had nowhere else, and I'll defend it with everything.CThe conviction that if I stop, people pay for it. I don't know how to hand that to anyone else.DI just wanted to get through the holidays with my family. Everything after that was self-defense.

← BackPick one, then Next

Next Question

Beat 08 / 0888% Shot

Question 08LEGEND

08When the credits roll, what do people say about you?Every franchise is really an argument about what makes someone worth watching.

AThat I was a myth people warned each other about in whispers, and that they were right to.BThat I never left anyone behind, the door was always open, and there was always a place at the table.CThat I did the impossible part myself, every single time, and never asked anyone to risk it for me.DThat I was just a guy in the wrong place at the wrong time, who turned out to be very hard to stop.

← BackPick one, then Next

Reveal My Franchise

Casting Has Been CompletedYour Franchise Is

Four action series. One of them is built around exactly the way you handle pressure, people, and a room that has just gone very quiet. Here is where you would survive the trilogy, and probably headline it.

2014-2023John WickJohn Wick to Chapter 4Reasonable to the line. Immovable past it.

You are precision with a grudge. You don't posture, you don't escalate, and you don't warn anybody twice. That is exactly why the people who know you are so careful never to be the reason you start.Why You Would Thrive Here

• The Wick films run on discipline: an underworld with actual etiquette, a hero who honors every rule of it, and a world that unravels the instant someone breaks one against him.
• You share that quality. You are extraordinarily reasonable right up to the line, and then completely immovable past it.
• Focus, commitment and sheer will. You'd be the one carrying grief through three sequels and turning it into technique rather than noise.
• People wouldn't call you dangerous. They'd say your name quietly and let that do the work.

The CodeNo Wasted MotionSay It Quietly

2001-2023Fast & FuriousThe Fast and the Furious to Fast XThe mission can wait. The barbecue cannot.

You understand the thing the whole franchise is secretly about: the cars are spectacular, but the crew is the point. You collect people, you keep them, and you'd drive through a building for any one of them.Why You Would Thrive Here

• This series went from street racing to orbit without ever changing its real subject, because loyalty scales and plot doesn't have to.
• You have the same instinct. You build a family out of whoever turns up, and then you defend it past the point of reason.
• You'd thrive here because the franchise rewards exactly your strengths: warmth, nerve, an absolute refusal to leave anyone behind, and a relaxed relationship with physics.
• The mission can wait. The barbecue cannot.

Found FamilyRide TogetherPhysics Optional

1996-2025Mission: ImpossibleMission: Impossible to The Final ReckoningYou have never once delegated the cliff.

You over-prepare and then take the dangerous part yourself anyway. It looks like control, but it's really responsibility. You have never worked out how to ask somebody else to carry the risk.Why You Would Thrive Here

• This is the franchise of the plan that collapses on schedule: the team, the mask, the rooftop, and the one person sprinting flat out because sprinting is all that's left.
• You share that refusal to accept an outcome. Told the odds, you treat them as an administrative error.
• You'd thrive here because these films reward competence and loyalty in equal measure. The mission matters, but nobody on the team gets left on the wrong side of a door.
• Some people delegate the cliff. You have never once been that person.

Over-PreparedOwn The RiskStill Running

1988-2013Die HardDie Hard to A Good Day to Die HardYou declined to be the person who let it happen.

You are not the most trained person in the building, the best equipped, or the one anybody would have picked. You are simply the one still standing at the end, which turns out to be the only qualification that matters.Why You Would Thrive Here

• Die Hard invented the modern action hero by making him mortal: outnumbered, out-planned, battered, and extremely funny about it.
• You share that stubbornness. Adversity doesn't make you noble, it makes you sarcastic, and then it makes you unstoppable.
• You'd thrive here because these films reward improvisation and nerve over preparation, and you've never had the luxury of preparing anyway.
• You didn't want any of this. You just declined to be the person who let it happen.

Wrong PlaceImprovisesStill Standing

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'Red Sparrow' Boasted the Talent of Another 'Hunger Games' Icon

Image via 20th Century Studios

Francis Lawrence, director of five Hunger Games movies, including the upcoming Sunrise on the Reaping, took to the director's chair for Red Sparrow, though the film faced much more critical backlash than he is used to. Red Sparrow also only grossed around $150 million worldwide, which barely turned its reported $70 million production budget into a profit. Charlotte Rampling, Joel Edgerton, Jeremy Irons, and Mary-Louise Parker also starred in a retrospectively underrated spy thriller.

Red Sparrow is one of the ten most-watched movies on HBO Max in the U.S. Stay tuned to Collider for more.

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