Lionsgate is clearly getting serious as it lines up another potential young adult fiction-based franchise with the adaptation of Patrick Ness’ Chaos Walking series of books. The company already has Charlie Kaufman on script duty for at least the first film, and The Wrap now reports that Robert Zemeckis is now in talks to direct.
Ness’ series, which comprises three titles, The Knife Of Never Letting Go, The Ask And The Answer and Monsters Of Men, finds Earth ruined in a dystopian future.
Humanity, however, has colonized a distant, Earth-like planet and is trying to make a go of it there when an infection called the Noise strikes, which makes all thoughts audible. Chaos, somewhat naturally, follows, and a young lad named Todd Hewitt grows up in a village where all the women have apparently been killed by the infection, and the men blame the native species called the "Spackle" and try to wipe them out.
With Zemeckis back in the live-action game via Flight, this could see him blend the fantastical style of his performance capture films with the more grounded drama of his last effort. He hasn’t yet made a deal to shoot the Kaufman script, though – and he does have other projects he’s developing, including murder mystery** The Execution Of Noah P. Singleto**n and identity thriller Rose. Still, the combination of story, writer and director are sufficiently bizarre to catch out attention, so fingers crossed that this one takes off.