Twenty-four years before Katniss Everdeen ever volunteered as tribute, sixteen-year-old Haymitch Abernathy is reaped from District 12 into the 50th Hunger Games, the notorious Second Quarter Quell, which demanded double the usual number of tributes as punishment. Forced to leave behind his younger brother, his best friend Burdock Everdeen and his girlfriend Lenore Dove Baird, Haymitch must navigate the arena's brutal trials alongside fellow tributes including his District 12 companions, all while the Capitol, embodied by a young President Snow and gamemaker Plutarch Heavensbee, watches his every move. Framing the origins of the man Katniss and Peeta would one day come to know as their embittered, alcoholic mentor, the film traces the raw, hopeful young Haymitch before the Games broke him. A gripping, emotionally weighty prequel that finds genuine tragedy in a character audiences already know is destined for a hollowed-out future, anchored by a breakout Joseph Zada performance.