Screams. Cheers. Tears. All at a volume not unlike what greeted Wuthering Heights’ Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, and Wicked’s Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, when they graced Sydney’s State Theatre for their respective film premieres.
But this isn’t a premiere. It’s a closed event, primarily for glittering influencers, media and some lucky members of the public.
There’s no crowd of hundreds. Most of the fans gathered are in the gutter. It’s Wednesday. Some have been waiting at the inner-city South Eveleigh industrial precinct for nine hours.
They have no chance of getting inside the room, and no public confirmation that who they are waiting for will actually turn up. One travelled from Cairns, Queensland, just in case.
Even if Joseph Zada – the 21-year-old Sydney-born actor who was plucked from relative obscurity to helm The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping – doesn’t show, it’s worth it.
“I’m a big [Zada] fan,” says 18-year-old Leah Sedgley, one of the first to arrive that morning. “It’s so amazing to see an Aussie in such a big franchise. I’ve been watching The Hunger Games since I was eight, so, it’s a very important movie.”
“He’s such an inspiration to aspiring Australian actors, that you can do it, and you can possibly get into these massive franchises,” adds 18-year-old Maddy Roth.
Set 24 years before the events of the original trilogy’s first book, Sunrise on the Reaping explores a 16-year-old Haymitch Abernathy’s time in the Hunger Games, the annual television pageant in which children of Panem’s districts fight to the death.
Woody Harrelson was the first actor to bring Abernathy to the screen, playing a weathered, surly mentor and strategist for Jennifer Lawrence’s Katniss Everdeen and Josh Hutcherson’s Peeta Mellark in four blockbuster film adaptations.
Sunrise on the Reaping depicts the trauma endured by Abernathy decades earlier, which explains Harrelson’s portrayal of a haunted alcoholic. The search for “a young actor with the skill and imagination to embody young Haymitch”, producer Nina Jacobson said, was “exhaustive and exhausting”. In the end, they found Zada.
Who is Joseph Zada?
The young actor has been especially busy these past two years, drumming up a small but notable amount of critical acclaim thanks to roles in television series Total Control, Invisible Boys, We Were Liars and East of Eden.
But not all of those projects had been released when his casting as Abernathy was confirmed in April 2025. He’s never been in a blockbuster film before.
Handing the keys to a multibillion-dollar franchise, one that’s crucial to studio Lionsgate’s commercial viability, to a relative unknown is a risk. Zada, however, is no stranger to rebelling against the status quo.
“I had a bit of a rough childhood, a lot of troubles and problems in my family, I got kicked out of both of my schools,” Zada told this masthead in February 2025 when speaking about his character, Charlie Roth, in Invisible Boys.
“I was sort of defiant. So I definitely relate to [Roth], the way he couldn’t fit in.”
Zada would have graduated from Waverley College, a private, all-boys Catholic school in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, in 2023, but dropped out after being issued an ultimatum: acting, or class.
Meanwhile, his half-brother, actor-producer-writer Hal Cumpston, made the honour roll. Their father is Dr Jeremy Cumpston, a general practitioner who, after a stint as “lovable rogue” nurse Connor Costello in the Seven Network soap All Saints, now mainly performs non-surgical cosmetic procedures from a dental surgery in Sydney’s eastern suburbs.
The strain of a since-settled legal battle with a former employer contributed to the breakdown of Cumpston’s five-year marriage to film producer Jessica Brentnall, Zada’s mother, this masthead reported in 2010.
Guts is Abernathy to his core, and Zada clearly has that in spades.
Wollongong local Ally Dawson, 24, reckons he can pull it off. She’s been catching up on Zada’s portfolio before the new film’s release, and is so impressed by it that she drove 1½ hours to Sydney, and waited more than six hours, for the opportunity to glimpse him up close.
“It’s really special that his first big role is going to be in something this big and hopefully bring a lot of attention to Australia as well,” says Dawson.
Of course, Dawson was rewarded for her dedication. Zada and co-star Mckenna Grace eventually show their faces, and spend about 20 minutes signing autographs and taking selfies with fans on the roadside before their minders usher them inside.
Fan dedication is, after all, the bedrock upon which Lionsgate is relying on to recover from heavy debt, seven back-to-back theatrical flops in 2024, and volatile share prices.
There’s a lot at stake for Lionsgate. Is that why Joseph Zada and Mckenna Grace are in Sydney?
A report filed to the US Securities and Exchange Commission in August puts the corporation’s debts at about $US1.9 billion ($2.7 billion), almost two-thirds of its market cap, last reported as $US3.3 billion ($4.7 billion) on America’s Nasdaq stock exchange.
Lionsgate’s 20,000-title treasure chest – including heavyweight franchises Twilight, John Wick and The Hunger Games – generates $US1 billion ($1.4 billion) yearly, according to Bloomberg Intelligence, through streaming as well as monetisation through content shared on social media sites including YouTube, TikTok, and Meta’s platforms.
As analyst Geetha Ranganathan writes, the library, which accounts for a third of its annual revenue, is key to Lionsgate’s survival, given the inconsistencies in film performance for a studio of its “mini-major” size.
Michael, released in April, was Lionsgate’s first film to gross more than $US1 billion worldwide, narrowing its quarterly net loss to $US29 million for the June quarter. Yet, Power Ballad, the next film on Lionsgate’s slate, grossed less than $US3.8 million internationally on a reported $US10 million production budget.
While Sunrise on the Reaping is anchoring the studio’s next theatrical leg, how much it will generate at the box office is anyone’s guess.
Catching Fire (2013) is highest-grossing Hunger Games film, claiming almost $US870 million internationally on a $US130 million production budget.
The franchise’s 2023 prequel The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, meanwhile, had a reported $US100 million production budget.
It grossed almost $US364 million worldwide, a figure bolstered by Asia Pacific re-releases in 2025 and 2026. (Perhaps that’s why, even though Liam Hemsworth starred in the original films, Zada and Grace’s trip this week is the first time in the franchise’s history that stars have come to Australia to promote it.)
Deadline puts Sunrise on the Reaping’s production budget up to $US200 million. That doesn’t include the film’s budget for marketing, which has been in overdrive on social media since author Suzanne Collins’ book, on which the screenplay was based, was announced in June 2024.
Lionsgate is well and truly aware of the fact that the TikTok generation, raised on the original book trilogy and film tetralogy, will make or break its bottom line. From the moment the project was confirmed, the studio has been courting them.
Most of the ensemble is seemingly fan-cast; Grace was predicted as Maysilee Donner a year before she was announced, and Elle Fanning was offered the role of Effie Trinket after a fan-led social media campaign.
An actual fan – Devon Singletary – was cast in a minor part after responding to an open call, where auditions were sent to casting directors via public social media posts.
As the November 19 release date nears, Lionsgate has been upping the ante. No longer is their social media content, made in the style of fan-edits, solely made in-house.
After approaching about 250 editors from popular fan-pages that cover Lionsgate’s IP on TikTok, they built a roster of 15.
In recent weeks, multiple Hunger Games fan-editors have put their own spin on the same select clips that have been circulating since the official trailer’s release six months ago.
One racked up more than 1.2 million views in four days. A clip poking fun at the fact Grace herself used to make fan-edits of Hutcherson’s Peeta Mellark got more than 1.1 million views in 24 hours.
Judging from the hundreds of clips that garnered thousands of views within minutes of Zada and Grace’s appearance at the fan event in Sydney on Wednesday night, the spectacle is fantastic for the income Lionsgate’s treasure chest generates on social media.
Grace and Zada’s charm offensive will continue in London, Madrid, Berlin, Mexico, Los Angeles and New York City. Whether it translates to box office dollars, and if Zada follows Jennifer Lawrence’s trajectory to an Academy Award, remains to be seen.
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