With The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping arriving in cinemas on 20 November, Panem is back on everyone’s mind. If you have already rewatched the whole series and still want more deadly games, rebellious teenagers and cruel governments, these movies like The Hunger Games should keep you busy. We have mixed classic dystopian films with a couple of recent ones that share some surprising DNA with the franchise.
1. Battle Royale (2000)
Battle Royale (2000) – 8 Best Movies Like The Hunger Games
The one everyone mentions first, and for good reason. Kinji Fukasaku’s Japanese thriller sends a class of school pupils to a remote island, gives them weapons and tells them only one can leave alive. It is far more violent than anything in Panem, and it got there more than a decade earlier. Battle Royale is essential viewing for fans of the genre, but definitely not one for younger viewers.
2. The Long Walk (2025)
This one has a direct link to the franchise: it was directed by Francis Lawrence, who made every Hunger Games film from Catching Fire onwards, including Sunrise on the Reaping. Based on Stephen King’s novel, it follows a group of young men forced to keep walking in a contest where slowing down means being shot. Cooper Hoffman and David Jonsson lead, with Mark Hamill as the chilling Major. Bleak, tense and very much in the same spirit.
3. The Running Man (2025)
Another Stephen King adaptation, and another deadly game played out for a TV audience. Edgar Wright’s version stars Glen Powell as a desperate man who signs up for a reality show where contestants are hunted for 30 days.
The televised spectacle and the cheering crowds will feel very familiar to anyone who has watched Caesar Flickerman at work. The 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger version is a cheesier but fun alternative.
4. Divergent (2014)
If you liked the young adult side of the Hunger Games, Divergent is the obvious next step, and one of the biggest young adult dystopian movies of the 2010s.
Shailene Woodley plays Tris, a teenager in a future Chicago where society is split into factions based on personality, and who does not fit into any of them. Theo James co-stars. The series lost steam with its sequels, but the first film is a solid watch.
5. The Maze Runner (2014)
Dylan O’Brien wakes up with no memory in a glade surrounded by a giant, ever-changing maze full of monsters. Wes Ball’s film keeps the mystery going nicely, and the action is strong.
Like The Hunger Games, it is about young people used as pawns in a game designed by adults who claim to know best.
6. Snowpiercer (2013)
Bong Joon-ho’s English-language debut puts the last survivors of a frozen Earth on a train that never stops, with the poor crammed into the tail and the rich living in luxury at the front. Chris Evans leads a revolt up the carriages.
If the Capitol versus the districts was your favourite part of the series, this class-war thriller is for you.
7. The Purge (2013)
For one night a year, all crime is legal. James DeMonaco’s horror-thriller, starring Ethan Hawke, takes a simple idea about a government using violence to control its population and runs with it.
The sequels expand the world nicely, and the series shares the Hunger Games’ interest in how cruelty becomes entertainment.
8. Children of Men (2006)
Alfonso Cuarón’s masterpiece is the most grown-up film on this list. In a near-future Britain where no child has been born for 18 years, Clive Owen’s weary civil servant has to protect the first pregnant woman in a generation.
The long, single-take action scenes are extraordinary, and its vision of a collapsing society still feels uncomfortably real.
Bonus: Squid Game
Not a film, but impossible to leave out. Netflix’s Korean series takes the deadly-game idea and adds crushing debt and childhood playground games. If you have somehow not watched it yet, it is the perfect binge before the new film.
What makes a good Hunger Games-style film?
The best dystopian films share a few things with The Hunger Games: a society that has turned violence into spectacle, young heroes who refuse to play along, and a powerful system that is more frightening than any single villain.
Each film above hits at least two of those, which is why they make great companions for a Panem rewatch.