Check out the cover for the next Hunger Games prequel, Sunrise on the Reaping

The sci-fi subgenre where teens battle against a future dystopia was all the rage in the 2010s but seems to have gone out of style since then, or at least that seemed to be the takeaway from the Netflix movie Uglies, which came out the other month to applause from nobody. But The Hunger Games series, which kicked off the teen dystopia boom in the first place, is still going strong: the 2023 movie The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, a prequel about future dictator Coriolanus Snow Snow, did very well. When author Suzanne Collins revealed that she was writing another prequel, this time about Katniss Everdeen's mentor Haymitch Abernathy, Lionsgate announced it was making a movie version at the exact same time. Plucky teens will fight to the death and you'll like it!

Anyway, the prequel is called Sunrise on the Reaping, and it's set around 25 years before Katniss entered the Hunger Games and changed the shape of Panem. Check out the back-of-book description:

"As the day dawns on the 50th annual Hunger Games, fear grips the districts of Panem. This year, in honor of the Quarter Quell, twice as many tributes will be taken from their homes. Back in District 12, Haymitch Abernathy is trying not to think too hard about his chances. All he cares about is making it through the day and being with the girl he loves. When Haymitch’s name is called, he can feel all his dreams break. He’s torn from his family and his love, shuttled to the Capitol with the three other District 12 tributes: a young friend who’s nearly a sister to him, a compulsive oddsmaker, and the most stuck-up girl in town. As the Games begin, Haymitch understands he’s been set up to fail. But there’s something in him that wants to fight … and have that fight reverberate far beyond the deadly arena."

It's a little late to give context, but the Hunger Games are a yearly event where the dystopian government recruits kids from each of its 12 districts and forces them to fight to the death for the amusement of the wealthy, mostly as a means to reinforce those districts' place at the bottom of the hierarchy. Every 25 years they have a Quarter Quell where they scramble the rules. But you know something? I think that, this year, the downtrodden might. Rise. Up!

Or something. Check out the cover for Sunrise on the Reaping below:

The Hunger Games books have a long history of creating interesting symbols. This new one is a snake and a bird sharing one long body with some spikes in the middle. Scholastic vice president David Levithan explained it to Today:

"The spiky sun rises on a symbol that will come to mean a lot to Haymitch Abernathy, as well as countless readers. Artist Tim O’Brien has created yet another iconic Hunger Games cover—this one symbolically exploring one of the central themes of the series: how conflicting forces can be connected by their common nature, the songbird and the snake springing from the same source."

Sunrise on the Reaping will hit book shelves on March 18. As for who will play a young Haymitch Abernathy whenever the movie gets made, that's still an open question. In the original movies, a middle-aged Haymitch was played by Woody Harrelson. According to The A.V. Club, fancasts for a younger Haymitch have ranged from Challengers star Mike Faist to House of the Dragon star Tom Glynn-Carney, who as King Aegon II Targaryen does kind of have a Harrelsen-esque dishevelement about him. Both are probably too old to play teens, though. We'll keep our ears to the ground for more info.

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