Who is Joseph Zada? The Sydney kid carrying the biggest franchise film of 2026
Joseph Zada turned 21 six days ago. By the time he turns 22, he’ll have led a Hunger Games film, a Netflix Steinbeck adaptation opposite Florence Pugh, and two seasons of a Prime Video mystery series. That trajectory is unusual anywhere. From a standing start in Australian independent film, it’s close to unprecedented.
He is also, for our purposes, the reason this masthead has a genuinely local stake in a global release for the first time since 2015.
The basics
Born Joseph Cumpston on 21 July 2005 in Sydney. He works professionally as Joseph Zada. He’s the second-oldest of four siblings, and he comes from a family already inside the industry: his father Jeremy Cumpston is an actor turned doctor and director, best known to Australian audiences as Connor Costello on All Saints; his mother Jessica Brentnall is a producer. His older brother Hal Cumpston is also an actor, with credits including Nine Perfect Strangers.
Through his paternal great-grandmother he has Afghan-Aboriginal ancestry, connecting him to the Barkandji people of far-western New South Wales.
The work, in order
Bilched (2019). His first credit, at fourteen, playing Toby. Directed by his father, written by his brother Hal, who also starred. A small Australian film that almost nobody outside the festival circuit saw — but a useful data point, because it means he grew up on sets rather than arriving on one.
The Speedway Murders (2023). Lead role as Dan in a hybrid crime documentary, a genuinely odd and interesting piece of Australian filmmaking.
Total Control (2024). A guest arc across three episodes at the start of the ABC political drama’s third season, playing Daniel. Small, but it put him in front of the local casting establishment on a prestige show.
Invisible Boys (2025). The one that changed things. Stan’s adaptation of Holden Sheppard’s novel, following four gay teenagers in small-town Western Australia, with Zada as Charlie Roth — a closeted kid navigating the fallout of being outed in a town with nowhere to hide. It premiered in February 2025 and drew serious critical attention both here and internationally. It remains the best available evidence of what he can do, and it’s on Stan right now, which makes it the single most useful thing an Australian reader can watch before November.
We Were Liars (2025). Prime Video’s adaptation of E. Lockhart’s novel, with Zada as Johnny Sinclair Dennis, one of the four Liars. His first major American role. He has said he taped the audition in two days in the middle of the Invisible Boys shoot. A second season is due in 2027.
East of Eden. Netflix’s seven-episode limited series adapted by Zoe Kazan from the Steinbeck novel, with Zada as Cal Trask opposite Florence Pugh, Christopher Abbott, Mike Faist, Martha Plimpton and Tracy Letts. He completed production before Sunrise began.
The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping (2026). Haymitch Abernathy.
How the casting happened
Lionsgate announced Zada as Haymitch and Whitney Peak as Lenore Dove Baird in April 2025, a month after the novel’s publication. Producer Nina Jacobson has spoken publicly about the extent of his preparation for the audition, and Lionsgate co-president Erin Westerman cited the emotional depth he brought to the role. Zada was reportedly up against considerably more established names — he told a We Were Liars castmate during the final Los Angeles stage of the process that he was competing with people much further along than he was.
He has since said he read Collins’s novel twice before shooting, and has been consistently deferential about following Woody Harrelson into the part — describing the experience of stepping into a portrayal that specific as intense, and the film overall as life-changing. Francis Lawrence has been direct about the scale of the ask, calling Harrelson’s original performance iconic.
Nothing in the promotional material so far suggests a performer coasting on a lucky break. The Meet Haymitch featurette, released on Haymitch’s in-world birthday, is built almost entirely around him, which is not how a studio hedges.
Why this matters more here
Australia exports actors constantly. What’s different about this one is the timing and the position.
Zada is not a supporting player in a franchise film. He is the lead of the sixth instalment in a series that has grossed more than $3.4 billion, releasing into a market where the source novel was a Nielsen BookScan number one. He’s carrying it opposite Ralph Fiennes, Glenn Close, Elle Fanning, Kieran Culkin, Jesse Plemons and Maya Hawke, at twenty-one, with one lead television credit to his name at the time he was cast.
He also came up entirely through the Australian system — ABC, Stan, independent film — rather than through the American teen-television pipeline that has produced most of his contemporaries. Invisible Boys is a Stan Original adapted from a Fremantle-set Australian novel. Total Control is ABC. That pathway working this well is a genuinely good argument for local commissioning, and it’s an argument worth making loudly between now and November.
The AU press cycle around him will accelerate sharply from September. Expect Australian junket access to be tight and centrally controlled, expect his Australian representation (RGM here, CAA and Untitled in the US) to be the realistic route to anything, and expect every outlet in the country to want the same twenty minutes.
What to watch before November
If you want to arrive at the film with a real sense of what he does: Invisible Boys on Stan first, We Were Liars on Prime Video second. East of Eden is due on Netflix and will be the closest tonal preparation for Haymitch — a young man in a story about inherited damage, playing considerably more interior than either previous role.
