Red Rising

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Marc Forster (World War Z) will be directing the adaptation of this novel by Pierce Brown, who also wrote the script. Here's the novel's description:

Darrow is a Red, a member of the lowest caste in the color-coded society of the future. Like his fellow Reds, he works all day, believing that he and his people are making the surface of Mars livable for future generations. Yet he spends his life willingly, knowing that his blood and sweat will one day result in a better world for his children.

But Darrow and his kind have been betrayed. Soon he discovers that humanity reached the surface generations ago. Vast cities and sprawling parks spread across the planet. Darrow—and Reds like him—are nothing more than slaves to a decadent ruling class.

Inspired by a longing for justice, and driven by the memory of lost love, Darrow sacrifices everything to infiltrate the legendary Institute, a proving ground for the dominant Gold caste, where the next generation of humanity's overlords struggle for power. He will be forced to compete for his life and the very future of civilization against the best and most brutal of Society's ruling class. There, he will stop at nothing to bring down his enemies… even if it means he has to become one of them to do so.

http://www.deadline.com/2014/02/hot-book-du-jour-red-rising-with-wwzs-marc-forster-helming/

Seems like a pretty cool concept for a film

 

[Airwings]

What if Johnny Depp is playing the lead?

 

[godisawesome]

Digging this thread back up because I read the series in the last two weeks.

This thing has some serious potential. It's very much a young adult book with genetics from Hunger Games and Percy Jackson, and then combines it with a few genes from adult series like A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones). The mash-up feels like someone trying to one-up every single YA Dystopian trope, but in a good way: the caste system featured involves genetic manipulation and augmentation alongside propaganda and espionage, the "education" period is a near gladiatorial death match , and the later sequels do in fact escalate everything, and when I say everything, I mean from a mineshaft level to a solar system level. Heck we even have the patented Young Adult romance, though the Sci-Fi and action tropes make both members hardcore badass warriors first and foremost, and thankfully I couldn't find a serious love triangle.

The biggest issues this property faces are its griminess and budget. This thing occupies a weird level in terms of maturity; some elements are clearly native to YA fiction, while others are very much beyond that:

Spoiler

Darrow and the young Golds (the upper caste he's infiltrating) have a school system that really is like a twisted version of the academies from Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, and Divergent. You take a test as an augmented superhuman, qualify with test scores, and on your first day, you're put in a room with a fellow classmate and have to beat them to death. And Darrow? The 16 year old protagonist? He does it. And then spends half the book lying to his opponent's older brother to try and maintain what he knows is going to be a manipulative friendship.

Then the rest of the curriculum is being dropped off in a valley with castles and conquering the other Houses to win. Oh, don't worry. You enslave other students to conquer, and robots will heal most injuries. Or not, since you can still be killed, and they don't seem to do anything to stop rape. Or the House that buries itself in a cave with some enemies to avoid being conquered and resorts to cannabilism to survive. Oh, yeah, and the whole thing's crooked, as you'd expect. So one of the Hoise leaders resorts to trying to murder Darrow and later threatens to rape his love interest.

I mean, it's a good thing the writer wrote the script, because it'd be a shame to tone this down or go overboard. Still, I feel like some Hollywood execs may be leery of the demographics this thing seems to shoot for.

And the budget... You'd be fine for the first art and probably the action at the Institute. But you'd need to go full mega-budget to show the world of the Golds and higher Colors. Like, unrestrained blockbuster level.