Paramount Taps Francis Lawrence For 'Red Rising' Movie — SkimNews
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- Paramount has picked up the film rights to Pierce Brown's 'Red Rising' book series, attaching Francis Lawrence — director of every 'Hunger Games' film — to helm the adaptation.
- Justin Rhodes will write the screenplay, adapting Brown's 2014 debut novel; Lawrence and Cameron MacConomy will produce through About.Blank alongside Francesco Goedhuis, with Brown executive producing.
- Francis Lawrence is no stranger to YA adaptations, having directed all four 'Hunger Games' films, 2023's 'The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes,' last year's Stephen King film 'The Long Walk,' and next month's prequel 'Sunrise on the Reaping.'
- 'Red Rising' is set in a color-coded, caste-divided solar system where a Red miner named Darrow infiltrates Gold society after a brutal transformation; the series spans six published novels with a seventh, 'Red God,' still on the way.
- The Hollywood Reporter broke the news; Deadline also confirmed Lawrence's directing attachment, with both outlets framing the project as Paramount's play to build a YA dystopian franchise on the strength of Lawrence's Hunger Games pedigree.
Why it matters: Paramount is attaching Lawrence — fresh off next month's 'Sunrise on the Reaping' — to a saga with six novels already in print and a seventh still in progress, plus author Brown as executive producer, giving the studio built-in sequel runway that most YA one-off adaptations lack.
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