Film

Billy Porter and Glenn Close join Hunger Games prequel cast – and everyone’s making the same joke

Billy Porter and Glenn Close have joined the cast of Hunger Games prequel, Sunrise on the Reaping (Getty)

Billy Porter and Glenn Close have joined the cast of Hunger Games prequel, Sunrise on the Reaping (Getty)

Billy Porter and Glenn Close have joined the cast of Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping – and everyone is making the same joke.

Let’s get the facts straight: the casting department for Hunger Games prequel Sunrise on the Reaping are operating on levels that are Nobel Prize worthy. These people can see in colours not yet invented and hear sounds at frequencies unknown.

Sunrise on the Reaping is a prequel to the original Hunger Games trilogy of novels by Suzanne Collins and their four film counterparts, but a sequel to the fourth novel, A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes; it has already cast Invisible Boys star Joseph Zada as a young Haymitch Abernathy in its on-screen adaptation.

Zada is joined by Whitney Peak as his girlfriend, Lenore Dove Baird, Mckenna Grace as ally and fellow tribute Maysilee Donner and Elle Fanning as a younger version of franchise favourite, Effie Trinket.

See what we mean? They’re cooking with gas. And the flames have just got even hotter, with the announcement of Glenn Close as wicked mentor to the tributes, Drusilla Sickle, and Pose‘s Billy Porter as their stylist and Drusilla’s husband, Magno Stift (16 June).

Other stars that have been drafted into Panem in Sunrise on the Reaping include Kelvin Harrison Jr. as Beetee Latier, Jesse Plemons as Plutarch Heavensbee, Lili Taylor as Mags Flanagan and Maya Hawke as Wiress.

Basically, there’s a lot of firepower in the cast – so much so that everyone is making the same joke: where’s the rest of the budget going to come from?

You may like to watch

“Bro this casting budget has to be biblical,” one X user wrote, to which another responded, “The budget has to be all gone at this point. The entire arena is gonna be CGI.”

“The [Sunrise on the Reaping] casting department went to the budget meetings with a gun and a vision,” another joked.

Sunrise on the Reaping follows Haymitch Abernathy, the mentor to Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark, during his Hunger Games – 24 years before the original trilogy, and 40 years after the prequel, A Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes.

Haymitch’s Games were a Quarter Quell, meaning Panem’s annual deadly tournament had an extra vicious twist; twice as many tributes were reaped to partake, bolstering the number of tributes to 48 rather than Katniss’s 24.

The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping is due in cinemas on 20 November 2026. Sunrise on the Reaping, the novel, is out now.

Share your thoughts! Let us know in the comments below, and remember to keep the conversation respectful.

More:

Please login or register to comment on this story.

Register to save articles and more. It'll only take a minute and it's free.
JOIN US TODAY!