Hey, maybe don’t spoil that big ‘Hunger Games’ prequel plot point already!
Spoilers are everywhere. I wish they weren’t, and I wish they hadn’t gotten to the point of losing their meaning in the decades since that word was first coined. At this point, spoiler culture has gotten to the point of ruining twists before audiences can even properly experience them: which is now, unfortunately, the case for the forthcoming Hunger Games prequel, Sunrise on the Reaping.
On Wednesday night, The Hollywood Reporter and other trade publications reported on a major piece of casting surrounding the upcoming movie. I am not going to link to it here, but I can assure you that you’ve probably stumbled on it already, or are going to in the near future. The reactions to said news have ranged wildly: confusion from those who haven’t read Sunrise on the Reaping when it was released earlier this spring, and frustration from those who have already read it.
The casting in question concerns something towards the end of the book (and, presumably, the movie). It’s something that people probably could have guessed, and something that book readers have expected to be a foregone conclusion at this point. But the fact of the matter remains: it didn’t need to be reported on on such a wide scale already.
Why?!
Sunrise on the Reaping, for those who have yet to be familiar, follows the story of a young Haymitch Abernathy (Joseph Zada), set decades prior to Woody Harrelson’s beloved portrayal of him in the main Hunger Games movies. As someone who voraciously read the book in the first days after it was released, one of the biggest thrills was getting to discover the younger versions of other characters who weave into Haymitch’s story, and what purpose they already serve.
A part of me has been hopeful that that experience will be preserved for the wider audience of the Sunrise on the Reaping movie. The rollout of flashy, Internet-breaking casting updates definitely complicated that a little bit… but it was still easy to forget that information and move on with your day. And when the film’s first teaser trailer was released last month, it did a pretty commendable job of showing things and people that book readers might recognize, but general audiences might not yet.
This particular casting announcement is not one of those instances… and it’s something that a lot of people will probably have in the back of their minds in the year before Sunrise on the Reaping actually releases in theaters. That could not only pivot their enjoyment of the movie to just waiting for these characters to show up, but it could just simply take the fun out of the surprise.
Sure, an argument can be made that if people really wanted to know, they would have probably finished reading the book by now. An argument can also be made that a good chunk of people might not even see or remember this casting news, at least by next November. But the fact still remains that some of the choice of when and how to learn that information was just taken away from the audience.
This could end up being the last story told in the Hunger Games franchise, unless author Suzanne Collins decides to use it to go off about the state of the world once again. If one of the saga’s last blockbuster moments gets the wind sucked out of its sails this early… that honestly sucks.
(featured image: Lionsgate)
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