Hollywood studios are always looking for new material to adapt into big budget feature films from popular books. The latest example of this is coming from Paramount Pictures, which is looking to adapt the science fiction novel Red Rising into a movie.
The announcement comes from a new report published by The Hollywood Reporter. The Red Rising movie will be directed by Francis Lawrence, with a script written by Justin Rhodes. Both Francis and Justin have worked together before, most recently on the Netflix adaptation of the video game BioShock into a feature film.
Red Rising is the first novel in a series called the Red Rising Saga, which is written by Pierce Brown. The saga has a total of six published books, with a seventh book already on the way. To date, the entire Red Rising series has sold more than 6 million copies since it began.
However, this isn’t the first time discussions about adapting Red Rising into a movie. Back in 2014, Universal Pictures explored the possibility of making a movie adaptation of the book, after obtaining the rights. But the project never got far into development. Red Rising was also planned to be adapted into a streaming series, but that also fell through in the early stages.
The story of Red Rising follows a young man named Darrow, who is a miner on Mars. After a terrible tragedy, he discovers his people are being enslaved by the Gold caste of society. He eventually joins a rebellion to overthrow the enslavers by infiltrating the Gold caste, in hopes of bringing it all down.
Francis Lawrence has been part of projects within the sci-fi genre before. He is known for being involved with The Hunger Games franchise, and is directing the upcoming new entry of the series, The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping. Francis also recently directed the adaptation of the Stephen King novel, The Long Walk.
