Francis Lawrence is attached to direct Red Rising for Paramount, bringing Pierce Brown’s brutal sci-fi rebellion on Mars another step toward theaters.
By Henry Hards
| Published
Red Rising has another shot at becoming a movie, and this time Paramount is putting the director of The Hunger Games behind it. Francis Lawrence is attached to turn Pierce Brown’s sci-fi novel into a feature film. A story about an oppressed young man taking on a brutal ruling class should be familiar territory.
The news comes from TheWrap’s October 16 report, which names Justin Rhodes as the screenwriter and Brown as an executive producer. The project is an adaptation of the first Red Rising novel, rather than a television series.
If you haven’t read it, Red Rising begins with a nasty trick. Darrow belongs to the Reds, the bottom rung of a society that sorts human beings by color. He works beneath Mars believing his people are preparing the planet for future generations. Then he discovers that people have been living comfortably on the surface for generations already. The future he’s working himself to death to build is someone else’s present.
Darrow’s answer is to infiltrate the Golds, the ruling class benefiting from his people’s labor. That takes him to the Institute, where their children compete for power and survival. He has to beat the people running the system at their own game before he can tear it down.
Lawrence has already directed four Hunger Games movies, which makes the connection pretty obvious. He knows how to put a young rebel inside an ugly system and make a large audience follow along. The interesting part will be what he does with Mars. Red Rising gives him a whole different civilization to put on screen, rather than another trip back to Panem.
There’s reason to keep expectations in check. Universal bought the rights in 2014 with Marc Forster attached to direct. That version never reached theaters.
For now, the new report offers no cast or release date. Getting Lawrence attached is a promising step, but Red Rising fans have been here before. The next big development needs to be a movie getting made.
