Before Katniss Everdeen’s defiant performance at the 74th Hunger Games, there was Haymitch Abernathy. Adapted from Suzanne Collins’s hugely popular dystopian novel series, The Hunger Games franchise achieved similarly monumental success. Kickstarted by The Hunger Games (2012), the movie series follows Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) as she volunteers in place of her younger sister for The Hunger Games, an annual event that forces kids from districts across Panem to participate in a televised fight to the death.
The final film, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 2 (2015), concluded Katniss’s story and showed a changed Panem, but plenty of stories were also left untold. In 2020, Collins released a prequel novel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, which focused on President Coriolanus Snow’s backstory and participation in the 10th Hunger Games. Three years later, a film adaptation hit theaters, starring Tom Blyth and Rachel Zegler. Another prequel, The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, will be released in two months (Nov. 20), and this time we’ll hear Haymitch’s story.
Viewers first met Haymitch in The Hunger Games as Katniss and Peeta Mellark’s (Josh Hutcherson) mentor and a former game victor reckoning with his past, though the books go into much more depth than the movies. Now, Sunrise on the Reaping takes a look at the events surrounding the 50th Hunger Games and the people involved. The movie has a pretty stacked cast, including Jesse Plemons, Elle Fanning, Kieran Culkin, Ralph Fiennes, and Glenn Close, whose character, Drusilla Sickle, has quite a villainous role to play.
Drusilla appears in the movie’s trailer, but a new teaser uploaded on X puts her front and center. In the video designed as a “message from the Capitol,” Close wears an extravagant red gown, complete with gloves and a blue sash, all while grinning. She then addresses the camera: “Those eyes, that skin, that smile, that power. Elegance is authority. Break free from imperfection.”
Anyone who has seen 101 Dalmatians (1996) is likely to get major Cruella De Vil vibes from Close’s performance, and her casting is an inspired decision, especially given Drusilla’s part in Sunrise on the Reaping. Without giving too much away, Drusilla chaperones the District 12 tributes, including Haymitch, and she doesn’t make his time at the Capitol any easier.
Of course, any franchise film of this size has some rumors floating around, and a few include certain major characters making an appearance, namely the couple who started it all. Both Lawrence and Hutcherson have commented on whether they’d return as Katniss and Peeta for Sunrise on the Reaping, and they both had different responses to the possibility. Given what we know about the Sunrise on the Reaping book, it seems quite likely, but audiences will learn for sure once the film adaptation arrives in theaters this November.
