Fans are eagerly awaiting the news of who will play a young Haymitch in The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping. Now, the franchise film producer has broken their silence about finding someone to fill the role previously played by Woody Harrelson. The latest entry in The Hunger Games franchise hit bookshelves on Mar. 18, 2025, and passionate fans are already speed-reading through the prequel story that follows Haymitch Abernathy and his road to victory in the 50th annual Hunger Games. A film adaptation is already well into development, with a release date set for Nov. 20, 2026, but still no casting has emerged.

Speaking with Variety, franchise producer Nina Jacobson spoke about the acting process for Haymitch. Part of the reason no decision has been made yet? “Because of this early manuscript not being published, we haven’t even been able to read actors for fear that sides could leak,” said Jacobson. Jacobson said they are not looking for someone to imitate Harrelson’s performance from the first four Hunger Games films but convincingly play a younger version of that character, saying, “It’s a great role. One of the things that’s so unusual about this is that very rarely does a franchise give an actor a chance to really show their chops and the range that they have, but these roles do.” Jacobson further added by saying:

“We’ve been holding our breath for a long time, but I think that what we’re looking for in that role is, you don’t want somebody who’s impersonating Woody, but you want somebody who very credibly feels like they could be a young version of this character, before the trauma and grief and rage that the fallout of the Games create. Nobody can be Woody Harrelson but Woody Harrelson. But you have to find that mischief that he has in him inherently and try to understand, if you turn back time from the man you meet at the beginning of ‘The Hunger Games,’ who he was before all of that, and why he became that…We’ve been blessed with very sophisticated actors in our roles. They draw in and attract real acting talent, because her characters are so deep, the ideas are so powerful. It’s a franchise that is still really rooted in incredible character trauma.”

Haymitch is one of the Hunger Games’ most cherished characters. These young actors would be perfect to play him in the potential prequel.

Jacobson certainly isn’t wrong when she says the franchise has attracted talented actors. Despite Jennifer Lawrence already being in films like Winter’s Bone and X-Men: First Class, her casting as Katniss Everdeen shot her into superstardom. One of Rachel Zegler’s follow-up projects to her lead performance as Maria in West Side Story was the prequel film The Hunger Games: A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. The franchise has had a wonderful supporting cast of some of the finest actors in Hollywood, including Woody Harrelson, Elizabeth Banks, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Donald Sutherland, Stanley Tucci, Jeffrey Wright, Julianne Moore, Viola Davis, and Peter Dinklage, to name a few.

With The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping 20 months away, the casting will certainly begin to heat up, and likely, every young actor will be testing for a role in the highly coveted franchise. Even if the previous film, The Hunger Games: A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, didn’t perform on the same level as the original four films did, it was still a box office hit and showed the franchise still has plenty of gas in the tank. A lead role in The Hunger Games film could be a career-making role if done well, or a career-ending if it turns out poor.

There are certainly a lot of expectations that come with playing a younger version of an iconic character. The X-Men franchise certainly got lucky as audiences embraced James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender as younger versions of Professor X and Magneto, respectively. The same goes for Star Trek, as the franchise has found two great versions of Captain Kirk and Spock to follow William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy. Meanwhile, Star Wars fans had a harder time buying Alden Ehrenreich as Han Solo, to the point that Disney now seems weirdly averse to recasting the iconic Star Wars characters. Whoever is cast to play Haymitch in Sunrise on the Reaping certainly will have some big shoes to fill, but one that has the chance to provide a new look at a fan-favorite character and be a star-making role for whoever gets it.

Source: Variety