Glenn Close and Billy Porter to star in The Hunger Games: Sunrise On The Reaping
Due for release in November 2026, the sixth film in the fantasy franchise will star Close, 78, as escort Drusilla Sickle, and Porter, 55, as stylist Magno Stift – who is also her onscreen husband.
It comes after Conclave star Ralph Fiennes was cast as villain President Coriolanus Snow in the prequel, which will be an adaption of the fifth book in the series written by Suzanne Collins.
Drusilla Sickle.
The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping – in theaters November 20, 2026. pic.twitter.com/1Od9yC2gBY
— The Hunger Games (@TheHungerGames) June 16, 2025
The book was published in March 2025 and is a prequel to the original trilogy, which was adapted into the films starring US actress Jennifer Lawrence.
Close is best known for her appearances in Fatal Attraction (1988), Dangerous Liaisons (1989), and 101 Dalmatians (1996), where she played Cruella De Vil, while Porter is best known for his performances on Broadway in shows such as Kinky Boots.
The new film follows a young Haymitch Abernathy, one of the few Hunger Games winners from the same district as the original trilogy's protagonist Katniss Everdeen, played by Lawrence.
Played by Zombieland actor Woody Harrelson, Haymitch is first introduced to readers in the original trilogy as the alcoholic mentor to tributes Katniss and Peeta Mellark, played by Bridge To Terabithia's Josh Hutcherson, before they are sent off to fight to the death in a televised arena.
Magno Stift.
The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping – in theaters November 20, 2026. pic.twitter.com/hSZUQKyiZl
— The Hunger Games (@TheHungerGames) June 16, 2025
The prequel follows Haymitch as he is drawn to fight in the 50th Hunger Games, a violent entertainment set up to maintain control in the fictional country of Panem, and faces double the amount of tributes, two boys and two girls, who are selected from each district.
The movie will be directed by Francis Lawrence, who also directed the Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Mockingjay Part I, and Mockingjay Part II.
The Hunger Games: Sunrise On The Reaping will be released in cinemas on November 20, 2026.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Scotsman
2 days ago
- Scotsman
Living on the Moon comes to the Edinburgh Fringe - a poignant yet humorous journey through Alzheimer's
Writer and performer Molly McFadden's mother, Marietta, had always been a huge supporter of her daughter's career. She would frequently travel from her Tennessee home to New York to see Molly in her latest theatrical production. Until things changed. Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Living on the Moon, which plays at Gilded Balloon Patter House at 14.45 from 30 July to 24 August, charts Molly's experience of her mother's 12- year demise from Alzheimer's. It is a poignant yet humorous account of how she learned to face the truth and let go. 'One time, at the beginning, she came to see me, and she was acting peculiar,' McFadden recalls. 'She stood and clapped through the whole performance. Then we went to a Broadway show and when we came out, she said, 'That was a wonderful meal.' And there were mood swings. We went out for a wonderful dinner, and she couldn't stop crying. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Told through music, puppetry and love, Living on The Moon is a dialogue between Molly and a puppet named Memory, who represents her mother. The show has gained an extra dimension since Molly has learned she herself has the gene for Alzheimer's and has been diagnosed with Mild Cognitive Impairment. Living on The Moon Directed by Michael Glavan, Living On The Moon received critical acclaim when it was performed at the York Theater in New York City and in Cleveland at the Border Light Fringe Festival. 72-year-old Molly McFadden holds an MFA from Florida State University where she was voted Most Promising Performer upon graduation. As an actress she has worked in theater in NYC as well as Equity theaters throughout the country. While living in New York she also pursued a singing career doing cabaret and concerts there and elsewhere. When she was 7 months pregnant, she received a review from Stephen Holden of the NEW YORK TIMEs, 'Molly is a stylist of note and for me an up-and-coming performer with a stunning voice in a disappearing genre". Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Sheperformed her one woman show based on Tennessee William's women 'Waiting in the Dark' at Circle Rep. in NYC. Her play 'The Man and the Myth' about John Malvin, for which she also composed the music was done at Cleveland Public Theater. Her other works include: 'In the Still of the Night,' 'Cease Not to Think of Me' and 'The Downside' which was awarded the OUTERCIRCLE Award. She is also working with her husband, playwright Brian McFadden on their musical'SCRATCH' based on the play 'The Devil and Daniel Webster.' Michael Glavan is a theatre maker and teacher from Cleveland, Ohio, with a passion for process-driven and devised storytelling. After studying at Kent State University, he spent nearly a decade working as an actor and director Off-Broadway and at regional theatres across the US. In that time, he contributed to the development and production of many new musicals and plays.
Metro
3 days ago
- Metro
What £40,000,000 could pay for instead of fund Jeff Bezos' wedding in Venice
The wedding of Jeff Bezos and journalist Lauren Sanchez in Venice is so lavish it would make the Capital from The Hunger Games blush. Five of the most extravagant hotels in the Italian city have been booked out to host up to 250 guests, like Donald Trump's daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner, alongside Hollywood A-listers like the Kardashians. Almost 100 private jets are landing at nearby airports such as Treviso and Verona, while Venice's nine yacht ports have also been booked up for the event. This is just a smidget of the display of wealth that feels less like a wedding and more like a coronation. Flanked by other members of the ultra-rich, the Amazon CEO is rumoured to have spent £40 million on the spectacle. Back in Britain, Metro looks at what the budget for a single wedding could fund. The cost of full-time nursery care in England (50 hours a week) for a child under two is around £12,425 per year, according to This means that Bezos' £40 million could help as many as 3,219 families with low income. While this represents a price drop of 22%, when compared to 2024 – due to the government's 15 funded childcare hours scheme – it is still a massive strain on working parents. And Scotland and Wales have not seen the same reduction in costs, which only apply to England. As the cost of living continues to bite, an ActionAid poll shows that one in five (21%) women and people who menstruate are now struggling to afford period products – up from 12% in just one year. This amounts to an estimated 2.8 million people in the UK, putting around one million more people into period poverty versus last year. Trussell Trust figures show that the average monthly stock need per food bank is around £8,000. Using the £40 million, Bezos could have funded 5,000 such institutions for an entire month. Around 2.3 million people – representing 3% of the UK population – lived in households that had used a food bank in the previous 12 months between 2023 and 2024. This includes 6% of children and 3% of working-age adults. In January 2025, almost 2.2 million pupils were eligible for the free school meal programme, 25.7% of all students – and representing an increase of 77,700 pupils from the previous year. The standard NHS cost for an emergency dental appointment in England is £27.40, covering urgent treatment like pain relief, temporary fillings, and an initial examination. In February, the government rolled out 700,000 additional appointments as statistics from the GP Patient Survey 2024 show that around one in four patients who tried to see an NHS dentist in the past two years were unable to book. As many as 1,474 people died while homeless – one person every six hours – according to data from 2023. Freezing temperatures during the winter months often increase that number. Tuition fees for UK students in England and Wales have been capped at £9,535 per year for the 2025/26 academic year, after the latest increase in December. Research by Ipsos in 2023 showed that nearly one in two school leavers have reconsidered going to university because of the rising cost of living. Furthermore, 31% believe university is not affordable. A survey also found that a quarter of Britons do not believe university is worth it for young people, with fees and student loan debt being major contributing factors. This is oligarchy. This is 60% live paycheck to paycheck & kids go hungry, Jeff Bezos, worth $230 billion, goes to Venice on his $500 million yacht for a $20 million wedding & spends $5 million on a ring while his real tax rate is just 1.1%.End this oligarchy. — Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) June 24, 2025 The cost of an initial asylum claim in the UK varies, but can range from £3,800 to £5,000 for legal representation, plus additional costs for accommodation and support. Figures by the Migration Observatory show that the UK's asylum backlog – defined as the total number of asylum applications awaiting an initial decision – stood at around 91,000 at the end of 2024.. That was 31% lower than the record levels reached in 2022, though still high by historical standards. Of those waiting for an initial decision, around 50,000 people (55%) had been waiting for more than six months. Raising and training an assistance dog can cost anywhere between 22,000 to £55,000, depending on the type of dog and organization. More Trending Support Dog, a charity that provides its services entirely for free, says that the cost to support a dog partnership, from initial training, to client training and support throughout its working life, is approximately £36,000. Declining biodiversity and habitat loss are just some of the reason some parts of the UK are in a desperate need of rewilding. While only an estimated 1% of Britain's land is currently rewilding, there is a growing movement to increase this to 30% by 2030, according to Rewilding Britain. Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@ For more stories like this, check our news page. MORE: Amber heat wave alert issued with warning of fatal risk to elderly MORE: Jeff Bezos's foam party proves all the money in the world can't buy taste MORE: Urgent recall for hundreds of salads over killer cucumber fears
Spectator
3 days ago
- Spectator
James Bond should be more like Paddington Bear
Denis Villeneuve, the Oscar-nominated director of such blockbuster behemoths as Dune and Blade Runner 2049, has been hired to reboot the James Bond franchise. Villeneuve is a hugely capable director, somewhat in the Christopher Nolan school of blending epic set-pieces with an intellectual and emotional core. As the first auteur to be hired to direct a Bond film – a gig he has made clear he'd like for the last decade – he promises to bring a unique sensibility to it that will, hopefully, ensure that critics and audiences alike go doolally when it's released sometime around 2027. I will not be one of them. Much as I admire Villeneuve, I don't think I've laughed once during any of his films, which tend to take themselves very seriously indeed. When the shortlist of rumoured directors for the Bond picture was leaked, there were other similarly grave filmmakers on it – including Nolan's younger brother Jonathan and Conclave director Edward Berger – but the name that really stood out for me was Paddington and Wonka director Paul King, who was apparently a serious contender for the much-coveted gig. The idea of 'Bond meets Paddington' might seem an unlikely one, but had King been hired, it is almost a given that he would have steered the franchise away from darkness. The franchise became comically obsessed with such edginess during the Daniel Craig era. While nobody is seriously suggesting that the next Bond film should cast a predominantly comic actor (such as the brilliant Joshua McGuire, currently stealing the show in the BBC's The Gold), the last few films were so grim and downbeat that Bond's all-but-inevitable death scene in No Time to Die almost came as a relief. Audiences left the cinema blinking in disbelief and asked, 'Did they really kill off 007?' The next film has to resurrect both the character and the franchise. I am concerned that Villeneuve will double down on the darkness and grandiosity of Craig-era Bond. Doing so would be to ignore the lessons of earlier pictures. The Roger Moore films often verged on self-parody (viz A View to a Kill and Octopussy, both of which have aged poorly) but in the case of his finest hour, The Spy Who Loved Me, it achieved the perfect blend of excitement, spectacle and much-needed humour – not least in its legendary pre-credits sequence. It supposedly had audiences standing up at its premiere and cheering when Bond opened his Union Jack parachute. And Moore was always underrated as 007, too. Suave and charming, of course, but with an occasional viciousness. That stood out all the more effectively because of its juxtaposition with the one-liners and (often groanworthy) puns. Bond is not a great British icon because he mopes about his dead parents An awful lot is riding on the success of the next Bond film. Amazon MGM, who now own the rights to the character, are clearly thinking in terms of expanding the intellectual property of the 007 universe. If there must be spin-offs, let it be the young Blofeld, not the early adventures of Miss Moneypenny. What I would suggest to Villeneuve and the film's producers David Heyman and Amy Pascal, should they be reading this, is to bring in a sense of levity and fun again – something that has been sorely lacking for a while. Bond is not a great British icon because he mopes about his dead parents and kills strangers viciously. He is beloved because of the one-liners, leavening moments of comedy. I doubt that the old cheesy seduction scenes have much of a role in the cinema of 2027, and perhaps character names like Xenia Onatopp and Pussy Galore have had their day, too. But the opportunity to make Bond a genuinely enjoyable character – shaken-not-stirred martinis, self-parodic introductions et al – is one that the filmmakers should not pass up. Otherwise, you can have all the spectacle and dark psychological drama in the world, and it will do nothing but leave audiences mildly depressed and angst-ridden. Frankly, we all deserve better than that.
