Suzanne Collins is writing a new Hunger Games book – and congratulations to all, it’s the Haymitch prequel story that many (myself included) have been clamoring for.
(Everyone says thank you The ballad of songbirds and snakes star Rachel Zegler for manifesting this in 2021).
Titled Sunrise on the harvestthe new book is set 24 years before the first Hunger Games book – at the beginning of the Second Quarter. If you’re not super plugged into the Hunger Games timeline, that’s the game that Katniss and Peeta’s grumpy mentor Haymitch Abernathy (played by Woody Harrelson in the films) won, by outsmarting the Gamemakers.
A new Hunger Games book right after the box office success of the Hunger Games prequel film may seem like a cash grab, but as former Hunger Games film producer Nina Jacobson told Polygon last year, Collins is being selective about when she returns to this world.
“Suzanne, the creator and North Star of everything we’re trying to do with these books, doesn’t just write to make money,” Jacobson said. “She writes when she has something to say.”
And boy, does Collins have something to say this time!
“Of Sunrise on the harvestI was inspired by David Hume’s idea of implied submission and, in his words, ‘the ease with which the many are ruled by the few,’” Collins said in a Scholastic press release. “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 urgent to me every day.”
Shall Sunrise on the harvest get a film adaptation from Lionsgate? It’s very likely, especially since Jacobson seemed very hopeful that Collins would write another book. And Haymitch’s backstory was cut from the main Hunger Games films to streamline them, so this would be a perfect chance to show it off. But the news is quiet on that front (for now).
Sunrise on the harvest will be released on March 18, 2025.