Francis Lawrence to Helm Paramount's Red Rising Film

Paramount has quietly secured the film rights to Pierce Brown's Red Rising, and the studio just handed the keys to a director who knows how to translate gladiatorial young-adult epics into box-office powerhouses: Francis Lawrence.

Justin Rhodes will adapt the first novel, a tight, violent origin story first published in 2014. Lawrence will direct and produce alongside Cameron McCanomy from Abbott/Blank and Francesco Godehuis, while Pierce Brown joins the team as an executive producer. The creative lineup hints at a faithful but cinematic reimagining—one built for scale and political heat.

The world of Red Rising is sharp and uncompromising: humans scattered across the solar system, social order enforced by a color-coded caste system, the Reds digging away in Martian mines and the Golds ruling with iron muscle. It’s a futuristic class war, brutal and cinematic. The protagonist, Darrow of Lykos, is a miner hollowed out by loss. He carves a path of revenge and revolution, undergoing a ruthless transformation to infiltrate the ruling caste. He then enters the Institute, a crucible of elites where survival is everything.

Readers know how the plot accelerates from one desperate gambit to the next. The original trilogy—Red Rising, Golden Son and Morning Star—expanded into three more books: Iron Gold, Dark Age and Lightbringer, with a seventh volume, Red God, reportedly on the way. That breadth gives filmmakers both a clear starting point and a long runway for sequels or a franchise approach.

Why Lawrence? He’s no stranger to adapting beloved novels for mass audiences. He directed all of The Hunger Games films and took on the franchise’s prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. His recent work includes a Stephen King adaptation, showing he can navigate dark, character-driven spectacle as well as blockbuster scale.

Paramount betting on Lawrence suggests Red Rising will be treated as more than a single sci-fi film—it’s being positioned as the start of a larger, cinematic rebellion.

There are questions worth asking. Will the adaptation keep the political bite and moral ambiguity that made the books resonate? Can it balance intimate character stakes with the sprawling world-building the saga demands? Casting, tone and how faithfully the screenplay follows Darrow’s transformation will decide how the franchise lands.

For now, fans can take comfort that the project is in experienced hands and that the source material’s appetite for high-stakes conflict and hard choices is intact. Expect Paramount to move deliberately—this is a property that invites spectacle, but it lives or dies on its ability to make Darrow’s rebellion feel urgent and real.