Francis Lawrence is attached to direct the Red Rising movie adaptation after Paramount Pictures picked up the film rights to Pierce Brown’s series. Justin Rhodes will write the script, putting the project into active development with a director and screenwriter in place.
Pierce Brown’s six-book run
Six books have been published in the Red Rising saga, with a seventh on the way. Pierce Brown said in 2024 on Instagram that the series had sold over 6 million copies, which gives Paramount a built-in audience before a frame has been shot. That kind of sales history is usually what turns a rights acquisition from a library play into a priority development title.
Francis Lawrence and Justin Rhodes
Francis Lawrence is a fitting hire for a property built around large-scale world-building and franchise mechanics. He last directed Stephen King’s The Long Walk and is back in the world of Panem with The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, due Nov. 20, 2027. Rhodes also worked with Lawrence on Netflix’s Bioshock and on Terminator: Dark Fate, so the pairing already has a shared shorthand.
Universal and the late 2010s
The project has changed shape before. Red Rising was once set up for feature development at Universal, and it was being eyed as a series in the late 2010s. Paramount’s move puts the material back in film form, which is the cleaner path for a first novel that centers on Darrow, a Red miner on Mars who infiltrates Gold society after his life is upended.
For now, the meaningful next step is script development, because that is where the studio decides whether the adaptation stays focused on the first book or expands toward the broader Red Rising saga. With Brown attached as executive producer and Francis Lawrence and Cameron MacConomy producing for their about:blank banner, Paramount has a real team around the property instead of a dormant rights hold.
