\n\tHappy Reaping Day, and happy birthday to Haymitch Abernathy.<\/p>\n
\n\tA \u201cMeet Haymitch\u201d featurette debuted Saturday in celebration of this auspicious date in Panem. It gives a first look at the origin story of Joseph Zada as Haymitch Abernathy, winner of the 50th Hunger Games and star of the upcoming \u201cThe Hunger Games<\/a>: Sunrise on the Reaping<\/a>\u201d film, which hits theaters on Nov. 20.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \n\tThe featurette teases Zada as Haymitch, with scenes ranging from the literal sunrise on his Reaping Day to Capitol interviews to the Games itself. Interspersed are clips from production and interviews with cast and crew about creating the backstory of the now-well known character. Woody Harrelson played Haymitch in the film adapatations of the original \u201cHunger Games\u201d trilogy, in a performance director and producer Francis Lawrence calls \u201ca very iconic portrayal of a character.\u201d <\/p>\n \n\tAlthough Zada takes up the mantle of Harrelson\u2019s character, he isn\u2019t the only actor stepping into a role familiar to fans of the series. Elle Fanning stars as Effie Trinket, originally played by Elizabeth Banks; the forthcoming fifth film also provides the backstory to Effie and Haymitch\u2019s relationship in the trilogy. Other returning characters with new stars include President Snow (Ralph Fiennes), Caesar Flickerman (Kieran Culkin), Plutarch Heavensbee (Jesse Plemons), Wiress (Maya Hawke) and Beetee (Kelvin Harrison Jr.). Mckenna Grace (Maysilee Donner) and Glenn Close (Drusilla Sickle) also join the star-studded cast.<\/p>\n \n\tFrancis Lawrence, who has directed all of the \u201cHunger Games\u201d films since the sequel \u201cCatching Fire\u201d in 2013, returns as director and producer. Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson also produced, with Cameron MacConomy and \u201cHunger Games\u201d author Suzanne Collins as executive producers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Happy Reaping Day, and happy birthday to Haymitch Abernathy. A \u201cMeet Haymitch\u201d featurette debuted Saturday in celebration of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":674006,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,225409,12343,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-674005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-sunrise-on-the-reaping","tag-the-hunger-games","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=674005"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674005\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/674006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=674005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=674005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=674005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}