Name: The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping
Director: Francis Lawrence

The Smashing Pumpkins’ contribution to The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping is “Black Stars”, a song that began as a Billy Corgan solo track and puts the band back in the studio with Butch Vig, the producer who shaped their first two albums. It is the first time they have worked together since Siamese Dream, the record that took the Chicago band from the indie circuit to multi-platinum sales.

Vig’s name carries weight well beyond the Pumpkins. He produced Nirvana’s Nevermind, and his sessions with Corgan on Gish and Siamese Dream defined the layered, loud-quiet guitar sound of the band’s early catalogue. Calling him back for one soundtrack song, after a run of recent albums made without him, says as much about where Corgan wants this song heard as about the song itself.

As uDiscover Music and ThePRP report, “Black Stars” dates back to sessions for a solo album Corgan was working on. When the invitation arrived to contribute an original song to the film, Corgan brought in Vig to help choose the material that best suited the world of Panem. The band tracked it mostly at Chaplin Studios in Los Angeles, with additional recording back home in Chicago.

The reunion did not come out of nowhere. On a livestream in the spring, Corgan told fans that a new song with Vig was “98 percent done” and added that “the plan is the song will be released this year”, according to mxdwn. “Black Stars” is that song, and it arrives with an official music video on the band’s VEVO channel.

On the soundtrack it sits as track 15 of 29 on The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping (The Album), executive produced by Dave Cobb, the Nashville producer behind records by Chris Stapleton and Sturgill Simpson. Every song on it was written or chosen for the film and is exclusive to the album. Noah Kahan led the campaign with “Draw You Out”, and the tracklist also carries arena mixes of “Ruthless”, “Survive” and “Doing The Best That I Can”. A veteran alternative-rock band next to Kahan’s folk shows how wide Cobb has cast the net.

The caveat is built into the song’s own history: “Black Stars” was not written for Panem. It was picked from Corgan’s solo material to fit a story about Haymitch Abernathy’s Games, which makes it a good match rather than a commission. Single tracks on sprawling soundtracks also tend to fade once the film leaves cinemas, and the video had drawn just under 40,000 YouTube views in its first hours. One song with Vig is a reunion, not an album, and nobody has said whether more of that material is coming.

The band has already worked “Black Stars” into the set of its Rats in a Cage Tour, an arena run across North America only, after headlining Lollapalooza in Chicago this summer. It follows ATUM, the three-act rock opera released in 2023, and Aghori Mhori Mei in 2024, which brought Corgan, guitarist James Iha and drummer Jimmy Chamberlin together as the original core.

The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping (The Album) arrives on November 13 via MCA, one week before Francis Lawrence’s film opens in US theaters on November 20.

Tags: alternative rock, Billy Corgan, The Smashing Pumpkins, The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, Black Stars, Butch Vig