Sixteen years ago, the writer Suzanne Collins first brought readers a dystopian world in which young people fought gladiator-style to their deaths, creating a best-selling series that spawned a global following and a multibillion-dollar movie franchise.
Now Ms. Collins is at it again, with a prequel that takes place decades before the original “Hunger Games” book.
Scholastic announced on Thursday that the book, “Sunrise on the Reaping,” would publish on March 18, 2025.
“Sunrise on the Reaping” will also be adapted into a film, set to be released on Nov. 20, 2026, and produced by Lionsgate, the studio behind the film adaptations of Ms. Collins’s other “Hunger Games” books.
“Welcome to the Second Quarter Quell,” a post by The Hunger Games, the film series’ official account, said on social media.
According to Scholastic, “Sunrise on the Reaping,” will take readers back to Panem, a postapocalyptic land made up of 12 districts that was once North America but was destroyed by war and climate change. The action begins on the morning of the reaping (the event in which participants are chosen from each district) of the 50th Hunger Games, also known as the Second Quarter Quell. The book is set 24 years before the events of the first “Hunger Games” novel.
In a statement published on Thursday, Ms. Collins said she was inspired by the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume’s “ideas on implicit submission and, in his words, ‘the easiness with which the many are governed by the few.’”
“The story also lent itself to a deeper dive into the use of propaganda and the power of those who control the narrative,” Ms. Collins said. “The question ‘Real or not real?’ seems more pressing to me every day.”
The “Hunger Games” is the first book in a trilogy that came out in 2008. The series also includes “Catching Fire,” the second book, published in 2009, and “Mockingjay,” her third installment, released in 2010.
In 2015, Ms. Collins said she was stepping away from “Hunger Games” after her third book, telling fans, “Having spent the last decade in Panem, it’s time to move on to other lands.” But Ms. Collins picked her pen up again and published the series’s fourth book, “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes,” in 2020.
The first four books have sold more than 100 million copies worldwide and have been translated into more than 50 languages, according to Scholastic. They have also been made into five feature films. The series attracted a legion of fans, drawn in large part to its defiant teenage heroine, Katniss Everdeen, portrayed in the movies by Jennifer Lawrence, with her long braid, bow and arrow, sense of loyalty and commitment to justice.
