New Hunger Games Prequel Announced, Set to Cover the 50th Games

When the celebrated prequel to Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games trilogy, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, was published in 2020, many readers, including the faculty here at Hogwarts Professor, suspected Collins might be launching a whole new prequel trilogy. Today, Scholastic has just announced the planned March 18, 2025, publication of Sunrise on the Reaping, set forty years after Songbirds and Snakes and twenty-four years before The Hunger Games. This is exciting news on a few fronts, including the choice of today, June 6, to make that announcement, and, of course, we have some guesses and ideas about what will happen in this new installment, set to take place during the fiftieth Games, the year, as Katniss Everdeen tells us that “District 13’s Haymitch Abernathy won the crown” (Catching Fire 37). Join us after the jump for some thoughts and predictions!

Why June 6?

In publishing, publication dates are often pretty arbitrary, assigned by editorial and production staff as part of a big-picture approach set to maximize profits and to streamline production. However, we’ve already pondered the way that previous Hunger Games installments were published on Tuesday, a very important day of the week in the original trilogy, especially the first book. By the time of Katniss’s Games, the Reaping and Games opening days were both being held on Tuesdays, although those both happen on Mondays sixty-four years earlier in the tenth Games depicted in Songbirds and Snakes. March 18, 2025, will be a Tuesday, but that may just be a random selection based more on publishing economics than on literary symbolism. The same could be said for historical events that have taken place on March 18, as there are a bunch of them (check out this list for a good start). The ones that seem most relevant are the succession of Caligula to the emperorship of Rome in 37 A.D., the repeal of the Stamp Act in 1766, the alliance of Hitler and Mussolini in 1940, the internment of Japanese Americans in 1942, and the Nazi invasion of Hungary in 1944.  There are countless other possibilities, of course, but those events, ones connected to tyranny, war, and injustice, seem like interesting ones to connect to Panem and its world. Snow, a tyrant not unlike Caligula and other Roman despots, was the central figure of Songbirds and Snakes, and the actions of the Capitol are often like those committed by global powers (including the United States of America) in violation of national and individual rights.

Any of those possible connections could simply be a coincidence, but the fact that the new book was announced today is likely very intentional. After all, today is the eightieth anniversary of D-Day, the epic landing of Allied forces in Normandy, France, that led to the overthrow of Hitler’s forces and the liberation of Europe from the Nazis. In fact, when I saw the announcement about the new book, most of my news feed was focused on wonderful commemorative events going on today, many of them featuring some of the few remaining WWII veterans. As historic interpreters, my family and I portray WWII civilians engaged in homefront efforts like Victory Gardens and the Aircraft Warning Service; at a recent event we had the privilege to meet a veteran, and I am deeply grateful his family parked his wheelchair under my tentfly for a few minutes so we could listen to Glenn Miller together!  Choosing to release news of Sunrise on the Reaping today shows, yet again, how deeply aware Collins is to the importance of dates and to the significance of her books as part of the human saga of war, that tragedy that puts children to death for the disagreements of their elders. As countless pictures are shared today for D-Day, there are plenty of faces in those boats at Omaha Beach who look as young and scared as those of the Tributes chosen in the Reaping. Since this book will take place in the fiftieth Games, the ones with double the number of Tributes, it is fitting that the announcement came today, on a day when 9,000  young men died or were wounded on the beaches where global officials gather today to thank them for their sacrifice.

Place Your Bets!

As we prepare for the release of Sunrise on the Reaping, which doesn’t even have a cover illustration yet, here are a few of my hopes/bets for what we’ll see and some predictions about what will definitely happen, especially amongst the media GameMakers.

1. An older Snow, a rift with Tigris. Since this installment takes place forty years after Songbirds and Snakes, expect a late-fifties Snow, at the height of his power, fully committed to the self he chose in the first prequel. That also means he has alienated, or will soon, his cousin Tigris who was so devoted to him in that prequel, but, by the end of the core trilogy, is helping the Star Squad in their effort to assassinate him. Perhaps their falling-out will figure prominently in this installment.
2. Haymitch in the arena. This is the Games in which Haymitch Abernathy survived the double-Reaping odds against 47 other Tributes, but which led to his life-long alcohol addiction, bitterness, and PTSD. We’ve already seen a little of that Games, including the death of his ally, Maysilee Donner, but we should expect more of the fallout, including the death of his family and girlfriend which he mentions was payback from the Capitol when he wouldn’t comply in his role as Victor. I wonder if Tigris, whom Katniss vaguely remembers as being part of early Games, was Haymitch’s stylist.
3. The origins of the Everdeens. There has been much speculation that Lucy Gray Baird, the Victor of the Tenth Games, is, in fact, Katniss’s grandmother. Since this book will take place when Mr. and Mrs. Everdeen are teens, perhaps we’ll see that connection if it exists, or perhaps see their courtship and even learn their first names.
4. Violence galore. We already know this is a bloody Games, but we can expect to see more detail, perhaps from Haymitch’s perspective, and perhaps including reparations in 12. The Games are also, at this point, much more codified after fifty years under Snow’s leadership, so expect more of what Plutarch Heavensbee calls “razzle-dazzle.”
5. Media misunderstanding. Just as the mainstream media world has always misunderstood these books and their powerful messages about the dangers of entertainment and luxury as false gods, expect to see incredibly poor-taste marketing and tone-deaf reactions from youtubers, “influencers,” and plenty of folks who don’t seem to get how much they are the butt of Collins’s jabs in these novels. The initial media releases already show that the writers (or the AI bots they have churning out these “articles”) are clueless about anything to do with these books aside from their popularity. Touting this as the “fifth” Hunger Games book is just one example. This is not the fifth Hunger Games Book. There is a trilogy and prequels. I don’t recall anyone ever calling Attack of the Clones Star Wars Five (it’s II, anyway), but then, more thoughtful writers, not AI, were probably around then.
6. Movie deals forthcoming. With the wild success of films based upon the original trilogy and the prequel, you can bet Hollywood will be foaming at the mouth to get its claws on this one. The word is already out of a 2026 release. Expect that attractive actors will be cast (I’m thinking Kiefer Sutherland, who is currently 57, will be heavily recruited to play Snow, since his father, Donald Sutherland, played elderly President Snow in the original films, and charming young Tom Blyth will still be too young to portray his Songbirds film role as Snow), hit songs will be recorded by popular musicians, and fashion trends will emerge based on the production designs chosen. Hollywood, perpetually clueless that it is the perpetrator of the evils Collins exposes (or indifferent, as long as the cash keeps rolling) will make a big movie and big money, but hopefully, Collins will continue to weave in her harsh criticisms of the Gamemaker culture.

Those are just a few early thoughts, and I am sure we will have many more as the publication draws closer, but we’d love to know your guesses, hopes, fears, and predictions for Sunrise on the Reaping, and perhaps, for a complete prequel trilogy.