New 'Hunger Games' novel out in 2025, movie in 2026
Love The Hunger Games? The popular series of American author Suzanne Collins will have a new novel and a movie.
Publisher Scholastic, in an Instagram post on Thursday, June 6, announced that Sunrise on the Reaping will be out on March 18, 2025.
The fifth installment of the young adult dystopian series is set 24 years before the events in the original The Hunger Games, "starting on the morning of the reaping of the Fiftieth Hunger Games, also known as the Second Quarter Quell."
The movie The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, meanwhile, will hit theaters on Nov. 20, 2026.
Collins, in a statement, said Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume inspired her to work on Sunrise on the Reaping. She drew inspiration from Greek mythology and the Roman gladiator games for her earlier The Hunger Games novels.
“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,’” she said.
“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," she added.
The first Hunger Games novel was published in 2008, followed by Catching Fire in 2009 and Mockingjay in 2010. The trilogy was adapted into four movies, with Mockingjay having two parts.
A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, a prequel set 64 years before the events of the first novel, was published in 2020 and was adapted into a movie in 2023.
The Hunger Games is set in the dystopic world of Panem, a country consisting of the wealthy Capitol, which is ruling over 12 impoverished districts. Each year, the Capitol chooses children from the districts via a lottery to participate in the brutal Hunger Games, a televised battle royale death match.
The protagonist is Katniss Everdeen, portrayed by American actress Jennifer Lawrence in the movies.
The first four Hunger Games books have sold over 100 million copies and have been translated into dozens of languages. A theater adaptation is also coming this year.