A new Hunger Games book is coming – and a film adaptation of it has been confirmed too.
Sunrise on the Reaping will be the fifth volume of Suzanne Collins’s best-selling dystopian series and its publication date has been set for 18 March 2025.
The book will be set 24 years before the first Hunger Games novel, which came out in 2008, and 40 years after Collins’ most recent book, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, publishers Scholastic announced today.
Hunger Games author Suzanne Collins. Pic: AP
Film studio Lionsgate, which has released all of the Hunger Games movies, then said it will be adapting the book for the big screen – naming 20 November 2026 as its release date.
Francis Lawrence, who worked on all but the first Hunger Games film, will return as director.
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The first four Hunger Games books have sold more than 100 million copies worldwide and have been translated into dozens of languages.
The movies are a multibillion-dollar franchise for Lionsgate. Jennifer Lawrence portrayed Katniss Everdeen in the adaptations of the original trilogy – the final book was split into two films – while other featured stars included Liam Hemsworth, Stanley Tucci and the late Philip Seymour Hoffman.
The film version of Songbird and Snakes was released last year.
The Hunger Games universe is set to extend onto the West End stage when a production opens in London this autumn.
Author Collins has hinted at the themes the new book will delve into and while she usually draws upon Greek and Roman mythology, the American writer is feeling inspired by something a little different this time around.
Collins has named Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume as one of her inspirations, specifically his “idea of implicit submission and, in his words, ‘the easiness with which the many are governed by the few”.
She continued: “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 pressing to me every day.”