Paramount Pictures has acquired the film rights to Pierce Brown’s science-fiction novel Red Rising, bringing filmmaker Francis Lawrence on board to direct its big-screen adaptation. Lawrence, known for directing multiple instalments in The Hunger Games franchise, will collaborate with screenwriter Justin Rhodes, while Brown will serve as an executive producer. First published in 2014, the novel follows a young man whose discovery about the true nature of society on Mars draws him into a struggle against its ruling class. The deal gives the long-awaited adaptation a fresh start in Hollywood, although casting details and a release date have yet to be announced.
Lawrence has directed The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 and The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes. He is also directing the upcoming prequel The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping. His experience with stories centred on oppressive governments, resistance and the consequences of challenging authority makes him a natural fit for Brown’s novel, which explores similar themes through a futuristic society built around rigid social divisions.
One of the principal challenges for Red Rising, will be creating a convincing future society without losing sight of the individuals living within it. The novel’s colour-coded hierarchy determines a person’s position and opportunities in society, establishing both its distinctive world-building and its central source of conflict. Lawrence’s experience with dystopian cinema provides a foundation for translating this elaborate fictional world to the big screen.
Since Red Rising was published in 2014, efforts to bring the novel to the screen have encountered setbacks. A previously discussed television adaptation never materialised, and Brown once described an earlier attempt to develop the property as “a corpse.” Paramount’s acquisition gives the project another opportunity to move forward after years of uncertainty, this time as a feature film with an established director attached.
The new deal is a significant development for readers who have been waiting to see Brown’s fictional universe realised on screen. However, the project’s next phase will depend on translating the scale of the novel’s social and political conflict into a cinematic narrative while retaining the elements that distinguish the original story.
Brown’s involvement as an executive producer also gives the author a role in the adaptation of his work. At the heart of the novel is an unequal society in which privilege determines opportunity, and challenging the established order comes at a considerable cost. These themes underpin the story’s conflict and shape the protagonist’s transformation, making the author’s participation a notable element of the film’s development.
Rhodes is writing the screenplay. His credits include Terminator: Dark Fate and Prime Video’s animated anthology Secret Level. He and Lawrence have also worked together on developing Netflix’s planned BioShock adaptation, based on the video game franchise. Their existing creative connection provides an established working relationship as they approach another story set within a distinctive fictional universe.
At the centre of Red Rising is Darrow, a member of the Red caste who believes he is helping prepare Mars for humanity’s future. His understanding of the world changes when he discovers that the society he serves has concealed the truth and that the privileged Gold caste controls the world above him. The revelation forces him to confront the system he once believed in and sets him on a path towards challenging it from within.
The novel combines science-fiction world-building with questions of class, power and resistance. Its Martian setting provides a futuristic backdrop, but the conflict between those who benefit from the existing system and those denied its rewards remains the driving force of the narrative. This combination of large-scale speculative storytelling and social inequality will be central to bringing the property to a wider theatrical audience.
Paramount’s film will adapt the first novel in the series, with no additional instalments confirmed for the screen at this stage. With Lawrence directing, Rhodes writing the screenplay and Brown serving as executive producer, Red Rising now has its initial creative team in place. The next challenge will be to translate the novel’s carefully constructed world into a compelling feature film, introducing Darrow’s struggle to a new audience while preserving the themes of inequality, power and resistance that define Brown’s original work.
