Maya Hawke is among the latest additions to The Hunger Games: Sunrise On The Reaping, due out next next year. The cast already includes Mckenna Grace and Jesse Plemons.
Update, 15th May: We can barely keep up with all these Hunger Games casting announcements. Lionsgate has also announced that Maya Hawke and Lili Taylor will be joining Sunrise On The Reaping as Wiress and Mags respectively. Like Jesse Plemons and Kelvin Harrison Jr., Hawke and Taylor are playing younger versions of very well known and beloved characters.
Wiress and Mags, both previous winners of the deadly Hunger Games, are assigned to mentor the District 12 tributes, including one Haymitch Abernathy, in the Second Quarter Quell as District 12 has no victors of its own.
Update, 13th May: Sunrise On The Reaping, the latest Hunger Games movie, has added another name to its ever-growing cast. Kelvin Harrison Jr., who most recently voiced Taka in Disney’s Mufasa, is set to play a younger version of Beetee in the film. Audiences will remember Beetee from the original film series, where the character was portrayed by Jeffrey Wright.
This time around, Beetee has already won his own games and is the father of Ampert, a young lad who gets drafted into the Second Quarter Quell.
Our original story follows…
Author Suzanne Collins took us back to Panem and the cruel world of the Hunger Games in March 2025 when Sunrise On The Reaping, the latest novel in the series, was released. The new book focused on a familiar face; a younger version of Haymitch Abernathy, played by Woody Harrelson in the film franchise.
A film adaptation of the book was announced all the way back in 2024 at the same time as the book, and news of the film’s cast has been reaching our ears (via Variety here).
Haymitch will be played by Joseph Zada, a face familiar to the fans of the Australian series Invisible Boys. Zada is also set to join Florence Pugh in Netflix’s East Of Eden.
Mckenna Grace will play Maisilee Donner, a fellow tribute in the games and Whitney Peak has been cast as Lenore Dove, Haymitch’s girlfriend. Jesse Plemons has the difficult task of following in Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s footsteps, playing a young Plutarch Heavensbee, who isn’t quite yet the mysterious Gamemaker we meet in Catching Fire.
As you might remember, Haymitch competed in the second Quarter Quell celebration, which found Panem reaping twice the number of tributes to compete in the deadly Hunger Games. Collins’ most recent novel received positive reviews (and, if you ask this writer, for good reason – it’s an excellent read).
Francis Lawrence – who chatted to us about the previous Hunger Games film, The Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes here and here – is set to direct Sunrise On The Reaping, which will hit cinemas on 20th November 2026.
