Haymitch Prequel Tracks Toward $80 Million Opening

Panem returns this week, and the forecasts have been moving in one direction. The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping opens in North American theaters on Friday, November 20, 2026, and Deadline has raised its floor for the opening weekend to $80 million or more, up from the $60 million to $70 million range circulating a week earlier. Presales, which started on October 28, are reported to be running ahead of the pace Wicked set, and some forecasters sit far above the floor, with Box Office Theory pointing past $105 million.

The first audiences don't have to wait for Friday. Early-access screenings begin Wednesday, November 18, at 6 p.m. local time, two days before the wide release, in premium formats only: IMAX, Dolby Cinema, 4DX, ScreenX, Cinemark XD, Regal RPX and AMC Prime at participating theaters. Money from those shows counts toward the opening total, and Lionsgate has added morning Sunrise Screenings on Saturday, November 21, for fans who want the arena with their coffee.

The film adapts Suzanne Collins' 2025 novel and goes back 24 years before Katniss volunteers. Its subject is the 50th Hunger Games, the Second Quarter Quell, in which the Capitol doubles the tribute count to 48 and a 16-year-old from District 12 named Haymitch Abernathy is sent into the arena. Francis Lawrence, who has directed every film in the series since Catching Fire, returns, working from Billy Ray's screenplay.

Joseph Zada plays Haymitch, the role Woody Harrelson made the franchise's weary conscience, and the early word is centered on him. Reactions from the London premiere singled out Zada's performance, and the supporting cast around him is built from familiar faces in younger roles: Ralph Fiennes as President Snow, Elle Fanning as Effie Trinket, Jesse Plemons as Plutarch Heavensbee and Mckenna Grace as Maysilee Donner, the District 12 tribute who first carries the mockingjay pin. Whitney Peak plays Lenore Dove Baird. Full critic reviews remain under embargo, and no review score has posted yet.

The scale is the franchise's largest. At 158 minutes, Sunrise on the Reaping is the longest Hunger Games film, and it carries a PG-13 rating into a Thanksgiving corridor that rewards exactly this kind of event release. It plays only in theaters at launch, including IMAX, and Lionsgate hasn't announced any streaming date, a deliberate bet that the opening weekend is the product.

What the tracking can't measure is the prequel question. The series' last film, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, proved a Hunger Games story without Katniss can open; this one asks whether Haymitch, a supporting character audiences love in someone else's performance, can anchor the biggest weekend of the fall. The forecasts say yes, loudly and rising. Wednesday's early crowds give the first real answer.

One more draw waits at the edges of the story. The novel closes after the events of Mockingjay, and Jennifer Lawrence has said in interviews that she returns as Katniss Everdeen, with Josh Hutcherson back as Peeta Mellark and Harrelson appearing as the older Haymitch. Lionsgate hasn't built its campaign around them, and the trailers don't show them. If the reports hold, the prequel ends by handing its story to the three faces that started the series.