He may have backed out of making the Daredevil reboot for Fox because of commitments to the Hannibal TV series, but David Slade is still looking for film gigs. Now Disney has signed him up to make the adaptation of Ally Condie’s dystopian young adult novel Matched.
The Mouse House picked up the rights to Condie’s book – the first part of, yes, a trilogy, whose third book, Reached, arrives in November – back in 2010, and have already set Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows writers Kieran and Michelle Mulroney to work adapting the script.
**Matched **takes place in a world where all choice is taken away from individuals. Young Cassia Reyes is matched with best friend Xander Carrow. But then something seems to go wrong with the system, and the face of another friend, Ky Markham, appears. Love triangle alert! And one that is completely forbidden by the higher-ups, particularly since Ky is what is known as an “aberration” who cannot ever be matched. How will Cassia decide? We’d suggest rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock.
This has shades of Divergent, currently in development, which in turns has shades of The Hunger Games. Slade has experience working with such territory, after he directed The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. But it’s not the only film the director has on his development slate. He’s also attached to a movie of Ed Brubaker’s graphic novel **Coward **and psychological thriller Villain.