Red Rising Movie Lands Hunger Games Director at Paramount

Paramount Pictures has acquired the film rights to Pierce Brown's Red Rising, with Francis Lawrence attached to direct the adaptation of the first novel — a deal first reported by The Hollywood Reporter on 16 October 2026 and subsequently confirmed by Deadline, Variety, and [IGN](https://www.ign.com/articles/red-rising-greenlit-for-movie-adaptation-with-author-pierce-brown-to-produce).

The screenplay has been written by Justin Rhodes, and Pierce Brown himself is set to executive produce, according to Wikipedia's production notes on the title.

Brown has confirmed the project is already midway into planning development, as reported by Winter Is Coming.

Red Rising, first published in 2014, is a dystopian science fiction novel in which sixteen-year-old Red miner Darrow, radicalized by the execution of his wife, is surgically transformed into a Gold and sent to infiltrate the Society's ruling elite — reaching #20 on the New York Times Best Seller list and earning a devoted fanbase.

The road to a screen adaptation has been anything but straightforward. A previously developed television adaptation was confirmed cancelled by Brown in a March 2026 interview, making the Paramount deal a fresh path to screen after years of stalled development.

As Wikipedia's entry on Red Rising notes, Brown acknowledged in March 2026 that the earlier project was no longer moving forward — meaning the Paramount announcement represents a clean break from the TV development, not a continuation of it.

Francis Lawrence is no stranger to large-scale dystopian franchises, having directed multiple instalments of The Hunger Games series — a lineage that The Hollywood Reporter and the SFF Gazette both highlight as directly relevant context for this hire.

Lawrence is also currently developing a Bioshock adaptation at Netflix, according to Winter Is Coming, cementing his position as one of Hollywood's go-to directors for ambitious genre world-building.

The casting of Lawrence matters beyond mere name recognition. Red Rising's rigid caste system and underdog insurgency narrative occupy very similar thematic territory to the Hunger Games franchise — both centre on lower-class protagonists weaponised against an opulent ruling class — making his experience with that tonal register a substantive creative credential rather than a superficial comparison.

The involvement of Brown as executive producer also signals a notable degree of authorial oversight, a factor that matters considerably to a fanbase that has watched other beloved dystopian properties suffer in translation. As Deadline confirmed, Paramount is adapting only the first novel in what is a multi-book saga, suggesting the studio is approaching this as a potential franchise launch rather than a standalone feature.

Red Rising has spent more than a decade gathering a loyal readership since its 2014 debut. For those new to the series, want the full verdict?

Read our review of Red Rising before the film conversation moves any further along.