Kieran Culkin to play Baby Stanley Tucci in Hunger Games: Sunrise On The Reaping

Culkin is, of course, fresh off his first Oscar win, having recently won Best Supporting Actor for his role in A Real Pain. Even so, it’s intriguing to imagine him tackling direct comparisons to Tucci, who gave a typically fascinating performance as the endlessly smiling, charmingly dead-eyed Caesar, face of the propaganda wing of the titular Games. (At least one person has joked online that, given Caesar’s vanity and apparently unchanging nature over the years of the Games, you could make a decent argument for Tucci to reprise the role himself.) Culkin, who’s 22 years younger than Tucci, joins a story that takes place 24 years before the event of Suzanne Collins’ original novel, telling the origin story of Harrelson’s Haymitch. He joins a cast that’s already well-stacked even when you get past people who had direct parallels to the original film series, including parts for Whitney Peak, Mckenna Grace, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Maya Hawke, Lili Taylor, Ben Wang, Molly McCann, Iona Bell, and Elle Fanning.

Sunrise On The Reaping, based on Collins’ March 2025 novel, is expected to begin filming in July. The film is being directed by Francis Lawrence, who’s directed every film in the series except the 2012 original.

[via THR]