It took a long time for director Robert Zemeckis to get out of the motion-capture business and back into proper filmmaking, with twelve years passing between 2000’s Castaway and last year’s Flight (which wasn’t really the imagination-bursting flick that his fans are used to seeing). His next project just might return him to his science fiction hey day, however, as sources at TheWrap are saying the director is now in negotiations with Lionsgate to helm an feature version of British author Patrick Ness’ bestselling young adult series Chaos Walking. And before you throw your hands up in agony over yet another dystopian young adult series headed to the big screen, this one gets extra cool points for being adapted by Charlie Kaufman, the Academy Award winning screenwriter of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. A Zemeckis and Kaufman team-up? We’re definitely interested.
The Wrap takes special care in pointing out that no deal is in place yet, but that a deal could be reached before the end of the month. Apparently Zemeckis has spent the last few months going back and forth in deciding whether or not to take the project on. The film admittedly sounds just as difficult to direct as it would be to write, but this is the guy that made Who Framed Roger Rabbit, so I doubt he’s intimidated.
The Chaos Walking trilogy is comprised of 2008’s The Knife of Never Letting Go, 2009’s The Ask and the Answer and 2010’s Monsters of Men. They take place in a future where humans have colonized another Earth-like planet. Problems arise when a phenomenon called The Noise occurs, which allows all living creatures to hear everyone else’s thoughts. But this isn’t What Women Wants for the new millennium. The Noise leads to moral and ethical breaches, and a war breaks out between the indigenous alien race and the humans that have settled there. The first book involves a young man named Todd who holds the key to saving the planet from destroying itself. Working with a girl named Viola, he tries to find a known area where silence exists.
While neither Zemeckis nor Kaufmann have really delved into the young adult lit genre – The Polar Express doesn’t really count here – their established careers put this adaptation miles ahead of similar sounding projects. And since The Hunger Games trilogy will be completed by 2015, Lionsgate is eager to find another popular series to hang their hats on for another five years. While I’m many years past the target audience’s age group, this is a series that I’m actually interested in, unlike The Mortal Instruments or Divergent series. And no, it’s not just because the central hero is a male.
Zemeckis has recently been trying to get another adaptation started, namely Elizabeth L. Silver’s murder mystery The Execution of Noa P. Singleton, and has also been developing Focus Features’ Rose, with a script from Nathaniel Halpern. Time will tell which of these projects he’ll eventually end up with, but maybe we can hear his thoughts if we try really hard.
