Joseph Zada and co-stars cover EW as Whitney Peak calls Sunrise "the first domino"
Joseph Zada, Whitney Peak, Mckenna Grace, Elle Fanning and Glenn Close are on the new Entertainment Weekly cover for The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, and Peak uses the cover story to call the film “kind of the first domino”. EW frames it the same way: Haymitch Abernathy’s Games are where the chain that ends in Katniss Everdeen’s rebellion starts.
The story went live on Tuesday afternoon US time, which put it on Australian phones at 3am AEST today. It’s written by Shania Russell, with portraits by Dana Trippe. Read it at Entertainment Weekly.
EW’s Sunrise on the Reaping cover. Photograph by Dana Trippe for Entertainment Weekly.
For Australian readers, Zada is the headline. He turned 21 in July, grew up in Sydney, and two years ago his biggest screen credit was a three-episode arc on the ABC’s Total Control.
Today he’s on a US magazine cover alongside Glenn Close, leading the sixth Hunger Games film. Who is Joseph Zada? has the full run of how he got here.
Zada’s first day was the bloodbath
Zada told EW the first scene he shot was the Cornucopia run itself: up on the launch podiums with the rest of the tributes, waiting out the countdown and sizing up the competition. He said that felt very fitting for a first day, and admitted it terrified him, in language EW had to censor.
Book readers know the rule he was standing under. The first novel gives tributes sixty seconds on their plates before the gong, and stepping off early sets off the mines. On a Quell field, that means 47 other kids on the plates around you instead of 23.
Lawrence on doubling the tributes
Francis Lawrence gave the Quell’s twist a production answer. Even the tributes the audience never gets to know have to be in every arena scene, he told EW, and any scene that turns into a fight needs a stunt double for each of the 48.
“That’s twice the costumes, twice the amount of people.”
Francis Lawrence, to Entertainment Weekly
The number comes straight from the card President Snow reads in Catching Fire. For the 50th anniversary, every district sends twice the tributes, as a reminder that two rebels died for every Capitol citizen. Twenty-four becomes 48, and District 12 sends four instead of two.
It’s a District 12 cover
Our read on the line-up: everyone on it is tied to District 12. There’s Haymitch; Grace’s Maysilee Donner, one of his three fellow District 12 tributes; Peak’s Lenore Dove Baird, the girl he leaves behind on Reaping Day; Close’s Drusilla Sickle, District 12’s escort for the 50th Games; and Fanning’s Effie Trinket, 24 years before she draws Primrose Everdeen’s name from the reaping bowl.
If Peak’s film is the first domino, Maysilee is the most literal one on the cover. The gold mockingjay pin Madge Undersee gives Katniss in the first book was hers, as Catching Fire reveals, so the rebellion’s best-known symbol traces straight back to a tribute in this story.
Ralph Fiennes, Jesse Plemons and Kieran Culkin sit this shoot out. On the evidence of the portraits, EW and Lionsgate are selling the film from the District 12 side first.
In Australia
Sunrise on the Reaping opens in Australian cinemas on Thursday 19 November through Roadshow Films, a day ahead of North America. IMAX Melbourne confirmed last week that it will screen the film from opening day. If you only know Zada from July’s Meet Haymitch featurette, Invisible Boys on Stan is the best place to see what he can do before then.
That leaves 85 days on the plate before Australian audiences hear the gong.
The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping is directed by Francis Lawrence and stars Joseph Zada, Whitney Peak, Mckenna Grace, Elle Fanning, Jesse Plemons, Glenn Close and Ralph Fiennes. It opens in Australian cinemas 19 November 2026, a day ahead of the US. Full cast, dates and stills are on the film hub.
Sources: Entertainment Weekly, cover story by Shania Russell, photographs by Dana Trippe, 25 August 2026 (US) · Suzanne Collins, Catching Fire (Scholastic, 2009), for the Second Quarter Quell rule and Maysilee’s pin · Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (Scholastic, 2008), for the sixty-second rule. Cover photograph Dana Trippe for Entertainment Weekly.
