Words Jim Roberts

Before he became Katniss’s and Peeta’s brooding, sharp-tongued mentor, Haymitch Abernathy was just a kid from District 12 with a girlfriend, a family, and no interest in fame.

But in Panem, history has a way of repeating itself. Like Lucy Gray Baird before him – and Katniss Everdeen after – he’s claimed by the Capitol at sixteen. Happy 16th.

Francis Lawrence, director of every Hunger Games film since Catching Fire, rewinds the clock twenty-four years to the 50th Games, aka the Second Quarter Quell. Never to shy away from a celebration, the Capitol doubles the cruelty: forty-eight tributes instead of twentyfour, all dropped into a meadow painted with colour and primed for carnage.

Joseph Zada inherits the role made iconic by Woody Harrelson as Haymitch leaves his beloved Lenore Dove Baird behind and enters the fray with a new generation of tributes. Among them is Mckenna Grace’s Maysilee Donner, a girl who holds a special, very familiar pin.

Inside the arena, the trials ignite. Outside, the scheming smoulders. Among new and familiar names from Panem’s past, Ralph Fiennes steps in as Coriolanus Snow – forty years on from the events of The Ballad Of Songbirds & Snakes, his tyranny well established. He doesn’t take well to a forthright hero who won’t play by the rules.

Games within games. Mockingjay in play. We know Haymitch survives but not how, or at what cost. And we know the Games continue… changed, evermore.

Panem’s Past

Ralph Fiennes

Fresh from The Bone Temple, Fiennes takes a villainous turn, inheriting President Snow from Donald Sutherland and Tom Blyth.

Elle Fanning

Fanning plays a younger Effie Trinket, decades before Elizabeth Banks’ vivacious version helped Katniss play to the pomp and pageantry of the Capitol.

Kieran Culkin

The Oscar-winner steps into Stanley Tucci’s polished shoes as Games host Caesar Flickerman.

Glenn Close

Hollywood royalty joins the franchise as Drusilla Sickle, District 12’s Quarter Quell escort.

Jesse Plemons

Plemons plays covert cameraman Plutarch Heavensbee, previously portrayed by the late great Philip Seymour Hoffman.