This past March, author Suzanne Collins continued to delve into the "Hunger Games" universe by dropping the novel "Sunrise on the Reaping," a story that takes place about 24 years before the original "The Hunger Games" novel. It chronicles the tale of 16-year-old Haymitch Abernathy, showing how the character won the 50th Hunger Games (aka the Second Quarter Quell), putting him in line to become the mentor figure to Katniss Everdeen in the original trilogy of novels and the four initial "Hunger Games" movies. After the initial trilogy of Collins' novels, the book is the second consecutive prequel novel, following 2020's "The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes."

In similar fashion to that latter novel being quickly adapted into a film version in 2023, "Sunrise on the Reaping" was tapped for the big screen treatment almost a full year before the book was even published, and regular "Hunger Games" director Francis Lawrence will...