One week before The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping reaches theaters, Suzanne Collins has written directly to the fans who have followed Haymitch Abernathy’s story for nearly two decades. In a letter shared by Lionsgate on Friday, the author calls the finished film “a vibrant and devastating adaptation” of her novel, and she signs off the only way she could: “May the odds be EVER in your favor!”
Collins traces the film to seeds planted in Catching Fire, where Katniss and Peeta watched the Capitol’s warped recap of Haymitch’s Games while he kept the truth buried. Bringing that truth to the screen, she writes, took the team that built the series: producer Nina Jacobson, who optioned the trilogy in 2009 and “was committed to developing a faithful version of the series,” her Color Force partner Brad Simpson, director Francis Lawrence, and returning screenwriters Billy Ray and Michael Lesslie.
The cast earns her longest ovation. The film is “led by a remarkably powerful and moving performance by Joseph Zada,” she writes, and she names the young tributes around him, with Mckenna Grace, Ben Wang and Molly McCann among them. Then comes the bridge to the original trilogy: Woody Harrelson returns as Haymitch, alongside Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson. TDN first reported Lawrence’s emotional return as Katniss in October, and Collins writes that watching the three “bridge Haymitch’s Hunger Games to Katniss’s tale” adds real poignancy to the film.
The music gets its own chapter. James Newton Howard’s themes from the first film now weave all six movies into one story, and the two new Covey songs carry unlikely lyricists: Edgar Allan Poe, whose The Raven supplies one, and a centuries-old unknown author behind the other. Dave Cobb, who gave the Covey their sound in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, shaped both, and Collins gives “a special shout out” to Noah Kahan for “Draw You Out,” his song for Haymitch on the album that arrived today, the same collection carrying Mckenna Grace’s Half Alive.
The film follows sixteen-year-old Haymitch from the morning of the reaping for the 50th Hunger Games, the Second Quarter Quell, into an arena holding twice the usual number of tributes, 24 years before Katniss volunteers. Sunrise on the Reaping is only in theaters Friday, November 20, and is rated PG-13.