Originally appeared on E! Online
The odds of Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson returning to “The Hunger Games” franchise are ever in their favor.
After all, the former costars will be reprising their respective roles of Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark in the upcoming “The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping,” a prequel centered Woody Harrelson’s Haymitch Abernathy character, according to multiple outlets.
The pair will likely appear in a flash-forward scene at the end of the movie. In the epilogue of the Suzanne Collins novel that the movie is adapted from, Katniss and Peeta sit down with Haymitch following their revolution in the Capitol, which occurred in Mockingjay, and learn about his tragic backstory.
“I didn’t want to have anything to do with their memorial book after the war,” Haymitch insisted in “Sunrise on the Reaping’s” epilogue. “What use? What point? To relive all the loss.”
Still, Katniss and Peeta embraced their former mentor and offered him a flock of geese to tend to after learning that his late love Lenora Dove Baird cared for the animal.
“Like the geese,” Haymitch remarked, “we really did mate for life.”
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And when Haymitch finally opened up about the horrors he endured as a tribute during the second Quarter Quell, he realized the parallels between himself and Katniss.
“She’s not an easy person; she’s like me, Peeta always says. But she was smarter than me, or luckier,” Haymitch admitted, adding that when it came to the reaping, “She’s the one who kept that sun from rising.”
While Harrelson has not confirmed his onscreen return to the “Hunger Games” film franchise, his voice was heard in a recently released teaser trailer, saying, “I think these games are gonna be different.”
Out on Nov. 20, 2026, The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping stars Joseph Zada as a young Haymitch, alongside Glenn Close, McKenna Grace, Elle Fanning, Ralph Fiennes, Jesse Plemons, Kieran Culkin, Billy Porter and Whitney Peak.
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