Pierce Brown's Red Rising series has been known for dealing with themes that are dark and difficult to adapt. Across six books and a seventh on the way, it follows a man from the lowest caste on a future Mars through an increasingly dark and expansive story about class oppression, revolution, the moral cost of war, and what it does to the people fighting it.
The first novel works as a tightly plotted infiltration story, but as the series progresses into Golden Son, Morning Star, and beyond, it becomes a heavier space opera that does not flinch from devastating its characters and asking hard questions about whether the systems people build to replace the ones they destroy are any better than what came before.
That scope and that emotional weight are what fans mean when they talk about the soul of the series. And protecting it is, by Brown's own account, the guiding principle behind how the Paramount film is being developed.
Speaking at a Waterstones event in Birmingham on October 17 alongside author Joe Abercrombie, the day after the movie was widely reported on, Brown gave the first substantive update on where the project currently stands. He shared a look at how things have been happening behind the scenes and stressed that protecting what makes the series what it is has been central to those conversations from the beginning.
Latest updates on the Red Rising movie
The film's creative team has been confirmed alongside the announcement. Francis Lawrence, who directed four Hunger Games films, including the upcoming Sunrise on the Reaping, is attached to direct. Justin Rhodes, who has been working with Lawrence on the long-gestating Bioshock adaptation at Netflix, will write the screenplay. Brown will serve as executive producer, with Lawrence and Cameron MacConomy producing through Lawrence's company about:blank, alongside Francesco Goedhuis.
Speaking to the Birmingham audience, Brown was measured but clear about where things stand: "Things are going well. We are making an effort to make a movie. A lot of the work behind the scenes, even getting the arrangements made, the relationships developed, and even the right people found, is a long journey."
He acknowledged that the announcement had come sooner than expected. "The information — I was as surprised as you that it came out this quickly," Brown said.
The author also revealed about where the process currently is and what they are prioritizing. "What I think is really exciting about that is that it's midway through us already thinking about how to develop it, and develop it in a way that protects the soul of the series," he said.
It is a widely noted fact among fans that Red Rising is not a series that can be adequately served by getting the action right and the look right while softening the edges. The books heavily deal with the idea that power corrupts the people who take it, that revolution is not clean, and that the characters readers care about will be hurt and can hurt others in ways that are not easily resolved.
Getting those things on screen without diluting them is the challenge, and it is the thing Brown has been insistent about through every previous attempt to adapt the series.
Paramount is also serious about “protect[ing] the soul of the series”
The author also described that commitment as something shared across the entire project, all the way up to the studio level. "I think everyone involved with the project thinks about [it] — including Paramount, including the executives there," he said.
Brown has spoken before about the earlier Universal experience, where he was largely kept out of creative decisions and the project ultimately fell apart without ever getting made. The contrast he is drawing here is not subtle. This time, the conversation about what the series is and what needs to be preserved is happening at every level of the production, not just between Brown and his immediate creative partners.
How that plays out in practice, once a screenplay is written and the real negotiations over tone and content begin, remains to be seen. But the fact that Brown is willing to say it this publicly, this early, suggests he has reason to feel confident about the setup he has walked into and we couldn't be happier for it.
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