New Hunger Games novel by Suzanne Collins will be released next year

‘Sunrise on the Reaping’ is a prequel to the original trilogy and will take place 40 years after the events of Suzanne Collin’s most recent novel, ‘The Ballad of the Songbirds and Snakes’

Suzanne Collins has announced that she will be releasing a new Hunger Games novel next year.

Publishing company Scholastic shared on Thursday (June 9) that Sunrise on the Reaping, the fifth volume in Collin’s blockbuster dystopian series, will be published on March 15, 2025.

It will begin with the reaping of the Fiftieth Hunger Games, set 24 years before the original Hunger Games novel, which came out in 2008, and 40 years after the author’s most recent novel, The Ballad of the Songbirds and Snakes.

For her earlier Hunger Games books, Collins has drawn upon Greek mythology and the Roman gladiator games. But for the upcoming novel, she cites the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume.

“With Sunrise on the Reaping, I was inspired by David Hume’s idea of implicit submission and, in his words, ‘the easiness with which the many are governed by the few,’” Collins said in a statement.

“The story also lent itself to a deeper dive into the use of propaganda and the power of those who control the narrative. The question ‘Real or not real?’ seems more pressing to me every day.”

Film rights have not yet been announced. All four previous books have been adapted into movies, a multibillion-dollar franchise for Lionsgate that starred Jennifer Lawrence as heroine Katniss Everdeen in the film versions of The Hunger Games, Catching Fire and Mockingjay, the last of which came out in two installments.

Suzanne Collins new book, ‘Sunrise on the Reaping,’ will be released on March 15, 2025 (AP)

The first four Hunger Games books have sold more than 100 million copies and have been translated into dozens of languages.

Collins had seemingly ended the series after the 2010 publication of Mockingjay, writing in 2015 that it was “time to move on to other lands.” But four years later, she stunned readers and the publishing world when she revealed she was working on what became The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, released in 2020 and set 64 years before the first book. It told the origin story of the Games’ oppressive president Coriolanus Snow, portrayed by Donald Sutherland in the original movie trilogy.

The film adaptation of Songbirds and Snakes, which came out last year, was co-led by Tom Blyth and Rachel Zegler.

Sunrise on the Reaping will be out in bookstores on March 15, 2025.

Additional reporting by Associated Press.