Maya Hawke is going from Hawkins to Panem.
The Stranger Things breakout star has joined the upcoming Hunger Games prequel Sunrise on the Reaping as Wiress, the District 3 victor and 3rd Quarter Quell tribute played by Amanda Plummer in the original film franchise starring Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson.
In this particular prequel centered on a 16-year-old Haymitch Abernathy’s time in the arena, Wiress becomes a mentor for the tributes of District 12, which, during this particular period, do not have any existing victors — that is, beyond the elusive Lucy Gray Baird, who vanished without a trace in the Coriolanus Snow prequel Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.
Kevin Winter/WireImage
Maya Hawke at the world premiere of ‘Inside Out 2’
Wiress is, of course, not the only familiar name returning for Sunrise: Kelvin Harrison Jr. (Mufasa: The Lion King, Waves) also recently joined the project as Beetee, played by Jeffrey Wright in the original films. In the prequel, Beetee’s 12-year-old son Ampert is reaped for the games, and as punishment for resourcefully defeating the arena during his own Hunger Games, he is forced to mentor his son.
Francis Lawrence, the franchise director behind every film adaptation except the first Hunger Games, will once again direct the prequel, set 24 years before the events of the first 2012 film. Joseph Zada will play a young Haymitch, originated by Woody Harrelson, while Whitney Peak will play his girlfriend and a Covey descendent, Lenore Dove Baird. Jesse Plemons, meanwhile, will play Plutarch Heavensbee, the future head gamemaker played by the late Philip Seymour Hoffman.
Hugh Stewart; Lionsgate
Joseph Zada; Woody Harrelson
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Hawke most recently voiced Anxiety in the Inside Out sequel Inside Out 2. The daughter of Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke broke out for her role as Demogorgon slayer and ice cream slinger Robin Buckley in Netflix’s hit sci-fi series Stranger Things, which just wrapped production on its fifth and final season last December.
“We’re making basically eight movies,” Hawke teased of the supersized finale while appearing on Podcrushed last year. “Because the episodes are very long . . . our showrunners, Matt and Ross [Duffer], take a lot of responsibility. They have an amazing team of writers, but they’re very involved. They write a lot and they are very intense and serious about the quality of the continued writing, and so it takes a long time to write each season, and a long time to shoot them.”
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