Lionsgate put out a fresh trailer for The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping on Wednesday, and this one belongs almost entirely to Joseph Zada.

He plays a sixteen-year-old Haymitch Abernathy, picked as tribute from District 12 for what Panem calls the Second Quarter Quell, the fiftieth Hunger Games. Double the usual number of kids go into the arena this round, and the new footage makes that scale impossible to miss.

This is the franchise's second prequel, landing three years after The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes took audiences into a young Coriolanus Snow's head. Sunrise on the Reaping goes back even further, to a Panem twenty-four years before Katniss Everdeen's own Games, adapted from Suzanne Collins' 2025 novel.

Inside the arena, Haymitch pairs up with Maysilee Donner, played by Mckenna Grace, and the trailer teases the wider group he falls in with, one working to break the Capitol's grip from inside the Games itself, per the film's official synopsis. It's the start of a chain of events that, decades on, tips Panem into open rebellion.

Ralph Fiennes takes over as a younger President Snow, stepping in where Tom Blyth left off in Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes. The cast around him is stacked: Jesse Plemons as Plutarch Heavensbee, Elle Fanning as a young Effie Trinket, Kieran Culkin as Caesar Flickerman, Kelvin Harrison Jr. As Beetee, Maya Hawke as Wiress, Lili Taylor as Mags, Whitney Peak as Lenore Dove Baird and Ben Wang as Wyatt Callow. Glenn Close is also on the call sheet, according to Just Jared and TheWrap, with her role still under wraps.

Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson are back too, JoBlo notes, as Katniss and Peeta, though the timeline means their parts stay small this time round.

Francis Lawrence directs, his fifth trip into this franchise after Catching Fire and both Mockingjay films plus Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes. Billy Ray and Michael Lesslie wrote the script, with Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson producing alongside Lawrence.

The appeal for longtime fans is obvious. This is Haymitch before Woody Harrelson's version of him hardened into the bitter, hard-drinking mentor who watches District 12 kids die every year. Zada's task is convincing you this teenager still has something left to lose.

The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping arrives in theatres on November 20.