Red Rising Director Francis Lawrence Says YA Series' Movie Adaptation Is a 'Priority' at Paramount Following Shelved Netflix Show

We got the chance to chat with Francis Lawrence, director of the forthcoming Red Rising movie, who let us in on some exciting updates about the project and its current status at Paramount.

Francis Lawrence might as well be the end-all, be-all of young adult book-to-screen adaptations. Best known for directing almost every single movie in the Hunger Games series, Lawrence recently helmed The Long Walk and is following that up with the next Hunger Games movie, Sunrise on the Reaping, in November.

Given his extensive pedigree with YA literature adaptations, we had to quiz him about the upcoming Red Rising movie, the long-awaited adaptation of author Pierce Brown’s galaxy-spanning sci-fi epic.

According to Lawrence, multiple "regime changes" at Netflix — where the movie was first set to release — set things back, but after eight long years, it finally found a home at Paramount.

"I have been attached to Red Rising for about eight years, and Pierce [Brown] and I have become friends. The books were actually brought to me by my producing partner, Cam [MacConomy], who's a producer on this movie and has worked with me since 2010. He found the books and brought [them] to me, and I fell in love with them, and Cam is in love with them. We met with Pierce and we brought it out to market and went to Netflix. We were going to do it as a series, originally. Unfortunately, our experience at Netflix — we had two amazing pilots written, but regimes kept changing and they kept creating these departments of 'tentpole, now it's YA, back to tentpole again,'" he explained.

"It was getting bounced around, and it's not a cheap [project] to make and to do it right. They never got the guts to pull the trigger on it. And so, the rights reverted back to Pierce. Pierce then went to Paramount, which I was happy about, because I actually prefer the theatrical approach for Red Rising rather than streaming, because I think it's a series that's definitely deserving of a theatrical experience and IMAX and the whole thing.

"I'm very, very excited about that. We have a writer that we like, who is now starting work on a script, and hopefully that's something that we will put together quite quickly. It seems to be a priority at Paramount, which is great. Super, super, super excited about that. But I love the books and I love Pierce and I'm really, really excited."

Despite the news going public just two weeks ago, Lawrence has been eagerly involved in this project for almost a decade, and it — much like the highly-anticipated BioShock movie — is finally moving forward after years of red tape and production complications.

Speaking of BioShock, Lawrence opened up about the forthcoming film and gave us all the gritty details as to why it’s taken so long to get made, but assured us that, as a gamer, he’s doing everything he can to be as faithful to the source material as possible.

Image Credits: Greg Doherty/Getty Images for Lionsgate