Jennifer Lawrence confirms return as Katniss Everdeen in Hunger Games prequel Sunrise on the Reaping

Lawrence confirms her return

Jennifer Lawrence, 36, confirmed on the Call Her Daddy podcast that she will play Katniss Everdeen again in The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, eleven years after her last appearance in the role. The conversation with host Alex Cooper was released on Wednesday, 28 October. Lawrence also confirmed that Josh Hutcherson, who played Peeta Mellark, and Woody Harrelson, who played the mentor Haymitch Abernathy, are part of the new film. She described the reunion as unbelievable and very emotional, saying the crew was largely the one she had worked with before.

“It was the same crew.”

She said she and Hutcherson had stayed physically close throughout the shoot.

“Josh and I, like, didn't walk to the bathroom without our arms around each other.”

Lawrence also recalled a protest from the first film's production. She wanted to wear a wig instead of dyeing her hair brown each time, and when the producers refused, she cut her hair into a pixie cut.

A prequel set during the 50th Games

The film follows the young Haymitch Abernathy, played by Joseph Zada, who is picked for the 50th Hunger Games. The Games carry a grim twist: for the second so-called Jubilee, twice the usual number of teenagers compete, so 48 tributes fight instead of 24. The story is set 24 years before the events of the first film. It shows Haymitch fighting for his life while he sees how the Capitol uses the Games as a display of political power and media spectacle. Suzanne Collins's novel, which appeared in March 2025, closes with an epilogue in which Katniss, Peeta and Haymitch meet again. How Katniss is written into the earlier timeline has not been revealed, and the cast also includes Ralph Fiennes, Jesse Plemons, Maya Hawke, McKenna Grace and Elle Fanning.

Franchise and box office

The four original films, adapted from Collins's three dystopian books, ran from 2012 to 2015 and grossed over $3.3 billion worldwide. Collins followed with the prequel book The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes in 2020, centered on a young Coriolanus Snow. Its film adaptation, starring Rachel Zegler as Lucy Gray Baird and Tom Blyth as Snow, grossed more than $300 million in theaters after its 2023 release. The studio Lionsgate has brought back Lawrence, Hutcherson and Harrelson, and speculation about their return grew once the novel's epilogue was known.

Release dates and ticket sales

The film opens in German cinemas on 19 November 2026 and in theaters from 20 November. Advance tickets for the opening weekend went on sale at AMC, Cinemark and Fandango at 9 a.m. on 28 October. Within minutes the sites and their apps were crashing and showing error messages that cited heavy demand. AMC then introduced a queue to get users onto its app, a sign of how strongly fans wanted seats for the opening weekend.