Hunger Games director and producer exclusively preview Sunrise on the Reaping: From lying to their families and Catching Fire comparisons to Jennifer Lawrence cameo

There's less than a month to go until Hunger Games fans will be whisked back to Panem for the latest instalment in the hit dystopian franchise – with Sunrise on the Reaping set to land in cinemas on 20 November.

The new film is based on Suzanne Collins's 2025 prequel novel, which follows a younger version of key character Haymitch after he is selected as one of the District 12 tributes and forced to take part in the brutal games.

Young Australian star Joseph Zada takes over from Woody Harrelson as the younger Haymitch, and he's joined by a huge A-list supporting cast, including Glenn Close, Ralph Fiennes, Elle Fanning, Jesse Plemons and Kieran Culkin.

Radio Times recently sat down for an exclusive interview with long-term franchise director Francis Lawrence and producer Nina Jacobson to preview the film – and you can find that full chat below.

Scroll down to find out everything from their first reactions to Collins's novel to those persistent rumours of a Jennifer Lawrence cameo.

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What were your first reactions to the Sunrise on the Reaping after you'd read Suzanne Collins's novel?

Francis Lawrence: She never tells anybody that she's actually writing, so usually by the time she reaches out to us, she's written the book. The book is usually almost finished and she has shared it with people she works with at her publishing company. Usually we'll just get a call going, hey, guess what? I've written this book.

Nina Jacobson: She likes to spring it on us!

FL: And then she also likes to sort of surprise us and say, 'I don't want to tell you what it is', because she wants us to be really fresh when we read the manuscript for the first time. So she kind of hints at some things at that point.

She'll tell us, 'I've written the thing. The manuscript is at my agent's house where his office is' and so we would drive to the valley and go read the manuscript in his backyard, and that was kind of our first experience.

And then from there we get together with her in New York because she lives nearby, and then we work for about a week or so, starting to break the book down and start the adaptation process.

What were the first questions you had for her this time after reading the manuscript for the first time?

NJ: Well, the most rewarding part of working with Suzanne is that she does write from theme, and she has a very strong sense of the bigger ideas that she wants to explore. And so, many of those early conversations are about David Hume and George Orwell and these bigger ideas of implicit submission, the role of propaganda. It's so mission critical for her that we are as immersed in some of the underlying philosophical historical texts. And I love that part of it because I always learn a lot about whomever she has been inspired by, and it really infuses the whole process from there.

But she's so modest that whenever she sends us a book to read, she's like, 'Listen, I just want you to honestly give me an honest opinion of whether you think this will make a good movie adaptation. Because it doesn't have to be adapted, like it could just live as a book and some things are better that way.'

And she goes into it with such humility. But this book was such an incredibly rich and rewarding reading experience. It is an unusual circumstance where you have a sitting with the book, and you can come and do however many sittings you need, but you read it all at once, no distraction, just you and the book.

And I cried my eyes out reading the book. I was a wreck. I couldn't stop thinking about it. And yet we had an NDA because we were so early. This time, we read the book much earlier on the timeline of when it would be published.

FL: We even had to lie to our families. I remember when I went to New York to go work with Suzanne, the book wasn't even announced yet. And so I couldn't tell my kids or anybody why I was going to New York. It was like 'Oh work stuff.' Everything was secret because the announcement hadn't even happened yet about the book.

So it was probably the most secretive we've had to be. I think one of the big takeaways was this is my fifth movie in the series and there are now six, and I love all the stories. But for me, my favourite had always been Catching Fire, which was my favourite book, and one of my favourite movies that we've done so far.

And this felt like a return to form to Catching Fire, just in terms of the structure, the emotion, the spectacle of the games, the scope of everything. Also creating a lead character that has sort of instant empathy. That was all really really exciting to me.

The last film, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, was a bit more structurally different to what had come before. Are you saying this is more in keeping with the earlier films?

FL: I think it's just a return to form. I mean, I love Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, and part of what I like about it is that it's so wildly different – that it's not conforming. And the Mockingjays are also very different to Catching Fire.

But I think as time has gone on, and the various books have come out, the various movies have come out, you see responses and see how people look and feel at these movies and stories. There are elements about those first two movies that people really, really, really loved, and some of that is the extravagance of the Capitol, some of it is the humour. Some of it is the spectacle within the games.

A huge part is really having a love for and empathy for the lead protagonist of the story, and a certain structure to the series. And I think it was just a return to form in that sense to something that I think people really craved.

There are also some links back to The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes – were you interested to explore that?

FL: One of the things that we try to do, and I think we've done well, is that each movie we make, we try to make it work within a vacuum. You want it to work on its own, so that when some 13-year-old comes in, they could start with this – and so you want it to stand on its own. You don't have to know any history or mythology or background on anything else.

But part of the fun for us, and especially for fans, is that this film reaches both forward and backward, right? So it's informed by Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. If you know that movie, there are scenes in this with Snow that people are going to love because of Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.

And if you know the original series, there's characters and things in this that exist that are going to call back to that in a big way. So there is definitely an element of beautiful nostalgia that this movie has for everything that's come before it, but you can still come in fresh and just meet these characters and have this experience that completely works.

When Joseph Zada was cast, did you encourage him to speak to [original Haymitch actor] Woody Harrelson?

FL: I think we were happy for them to meet at one point. The thing that we encouraged everybody to do was to not imitate. We wanted people to embody an element and a spirit of the characters.

Joseph, early on in the testing phase, was modulating how close he got to Woody. And what you wanted was that feeling of, 'Oh wow, I can sort of feel the young version of Woody in there,' without it feeling like an impersonation.

I think that was really the key. But really, for everybody, it was: this is your interpretation of the role. Like talking to Ralph Fiennes, you do not have to sound like Donald Sutherland. And the same with Elle [Fanning]. You don't have to be Elizabeth Banks. This is your take on Effie, 25 years earlier. So I think it was really fun. I think the actors all had a lot of fun.

NJ: And we looked for continuity, obviously, in terms of wardrobe and style for each of those characters who you've met the older version of. But we never are casting off of, 'Oh, does this person look like a dead ringer?' appearance-wise.

We always wanted to move away from impersonation more towards like inhabiting the essence of the character, but really finding your own way into it as an actor. And also allowing for the fact that time changes all of us, and experiences change all of us.

And the experiences these characters go through that we don't witness until we see them again in Catching Fire... many of them obviously would transform anybody. And so we wanted the actors to be able to really find their own take without feeling confined in a way by the person they would ultimately become.

Are you interested in seeing Woody Harrelson's reaction to the film? How much have you spoken to him about it?

FL: We've talked to him about it. Yeah. So I'm very curious for him having seen the movie!

And I guess that goes for the other original cast members too?

FL: Yeah, absolutely. But I mean, we've gotten a lot of support. I have to say that the actors we've worked with in general have all become a bit of a Hunger Games family. I think everybody enjoyed their time making the movies and enjoys the movies and what they're about and the characters they've played and so they've all been super supportive.

The reaction to most of the casting announcements was really positive. Was that very reassuring for you to see how much the fans took those announcements on board?

NJ: I mean, it's thrilling. We really are very blessed to have a great fan base. And what I appreciate about them is that they really go beyond the surface level. They love the books and the movies, and they really are connected to these characters.

We operate very much as fans ourselves too. We don't feel such a distance of 'them' and 'us'. We're really thinking like, 'How do we imagine it? Who do we hope to see?' And so, of course, it's incredibly rewarding when people celebrate and feel like you got it right.

We also really appreciate the fact that, from the beginning, our fans have always given us the latitude to find the best actor for the role, to find the person who really connects to it in a meaningful way, and to let them explore. They don't have the handcuffs on that sometimes when there's beloved source material can really inhibit creativity instead of expanding it.

FL: I feel like we always end up aligning with the fans' hopes. It may not always be exact in some circumstances, but I think in general we end up aligning.

There have been reports that Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson are back for a cameo as Katniss and Peeta. Can you say anything about that?

FL: I just think people need to see the movie and see whether or not they make an appearance!

(Jennifer Lawrence has since confirmed that she will feature in the film).

Joseph Zada has said he was a bit starstruck to meet Ralph Fiennes. What was their first interaction?

FL: The first scene where they meet in person and are alone in a room was really the first time they saw each other. It was the morning of that shoot day, and I think we shot that scene over two days, where we blocked and rehearsed the scene.

Ralph Fiennes was coming in quite late in our shooting schedule, probably two thirds, if not three quarters, of the way through our shooting schedule. So we were a real machine by then and Joe had already been put through the ringer and done all of the games and all of District 12, and lots of things have happened.

And they come in and they have a rehearsal and I wouldn't say formal, but I think it was just Ralph was ready to get to work, and Joseph was nervous about being in a scene with Ralph, and it was just the two of them. And Ralph, even though he's playing a character that's quite controlled and quiet, is very powerful in his presence.

I think that was really the most intimidating part. It's just the intensity which he brings to a part when he's in the scene. So even with Joseph being off camera and having Ralph look him dead in the eyes... it was intimidating.

Was it interesting for you to see a third actor take on the role of Coriolanus Snow?

NJ: For sure. Sometimes we have actors who come in who already know the books or the world, either from the movies or they have kids or nieces or nephews who've read it. This one was very special because a lot of our young cast grew up with the original franchise.

They grew up watching those movies that we made together, and grew up with Katniss, and went on the journey and have now come back to be inside of the Hunger Games as both incredible actors, but also as fans themselves.

But with somebody like Ralph, I just appreciate that he didn't shoot for that long in our schedule – we were only together for about a week – but the depth of his reading and the connections that he found to Shakespearean character work and characters that he has explored

FL: I mean, he directed and starred in Coriolanus the Shakespeare adaptation, and so he instantly, and through lots of our conversations and his research on Hunger Games, saw the parallels that Suzanne was making with that character.

And so he even has some lines that are in the movie that he improvised that are all entirely from his experience of Coriolanus now mixing with our version of Coriolanus, and so that was kind of fun to see him start to kind of put the puzzle pieces together

The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping is scheduled for release in UK cinemas on 20 November 2026.

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