Haymitch Abernathy

Haymitch's youth is the subject of The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, which opens November 20, 2026. According to what Lionsgate has released, the story is set 24 years before the first movie: Haymitch is 16 when he's reaped for the 50th Hunger Games, the second Quarter Quell, the edition in which every district has to send twice as many tributes.

Joseph Zada plays young Haymitch. The confirmed cast includes Whitney Peak as Lenore Dove Baird, Mckenna Grace as Maysilee Donner, Ben Wang as Wyatt Callow, Jesse Plemons as Plutarch Heavensbee, Elle Fanning as Effie Trinket, Ralph Fiennes as President Snow and Kieran Culkin as Caesar Flickerman. Francis Lawrence, who directed movies 2 through 4, is back behind the camera. Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson are also confirmed as Katniss and Peeta.

At the 74th Games, Haymitch is District 12's only living victor and therefore Katniss and Peeta's mentor. He shows up on the train stumbling drunk and answers their questions with jokes. Katniss loses her patience and stabs a knife into the table, and Effie is horrified about the mahogany. From then on he starts taking them seriously: smile, be likable, win over the crowd, because without sponsors nothing reaches you in the arena.

While Katniss fights, Haymitch works the outside. He sends her burn medicine by parachute and, after Peeta's confession, bets on the star-crossed couple. He goes to Head Gamemaker Seneca Crane and convinces him the audience will love seeing two lovers from the same district walk out of the arena together, which leads to the rule change allowing two victors. When Katniss and Peeta make it out alive, he warns her she has just made powerful enemies.

Haymitch helps Katniss and Peeta sell the romance on the Victory Tour and jumps into the fight when Peacekeepers whip Gale. When the Quarter Quell with victors is announced, his name is drawn as the male tribute, but Peeta volunteers in his place. Haymitch promises Katniss he'll work to keep Peeta alive.

What he hides is that he was already part of a plan with Plutarch Heavensbee and other victors to get Katniss out of the arena. When she wakes up on the hovercraft and learns Peeta was left behind in the Capitol's hands, she goes after him and has to be sedated.

In District 13, where alcohol is banned, Haymitch goes through forced withdrawal and doesn't hide his bad mood. When the first propaganda spot shot in a studio comes out fake, he's the one who asks the room when Katniss had genuinely moved each of them, showing she works when she's being real, not reading a script. That's where the idea of sending her into the field with a film crew comes from.

After Snow falls, Coin gathers the surviving victors to vote on one last Hunger Games with Capitol children. Katniss votes yes, and Haymitch follows: he's with the Mockingjay. After she kills Coin at the execution, it's Haymitch who reads her Plutarch's letter saying she's been pardoned and the Games are over for good. At the goodbye, Effie gets emotional and kisses him, a scene that isn't in the books.

In Suzanne Collins's books, Haymitch drinks to cope with what he went through, and Katniss slowly comes to understand that. Catching Fire, the second book, already summed up his Games in a few pages. In 2025, Collins published Sunrise on the Reaping, the novel that tells the whole story from his point of view and serves as the basis for the movie.