News about Lionsgate's Young Adult adaptation Chaos Walking is currently arriving in annual instalments. In mid-2012 we learned that Charlie Kaufman was writing the screenplay, and last September came word that Robert Zemeckis was aboard to direct. This year's update is that Kaufman's work has, perhaps unsurprisingly, been deemed not quite the ticket for a would-be franchise (we can only imagine what the writer of Adaptation and Synecdoche, New York did with the material). The latest scribe to take a crack at Patrick Ness' novel will be Jamie Linden.
Ness’ trilogy – The Knife Of Never Letting Go, The Ask And The Answer and Monsters Of Men – finds humankind in a dystopian future, colonising a distant planet after the Earth has been ruined. When an infection called the Noise strikes, all thoughts become audible and chaos follows.
A corrupt autocrat takes the chance to seize control of the human settlements in order to launch a strike on native alien race the Spackles, blaming them for the infection that's apparently killing human women. Young Todd Hewitt, the only boy in a town solely comprised of men, rebels to stop the oncoming destruction. Going on the run with his dog, he teams up with a mysterious, girl who is the source of a precious patch of silence.
Linden's previous credits include Lasse Halstrom's Nicholas Sparks adaptation Dear John, and he also wrote and directed 2011's romantic comedy-drama 10 Years starring Channing Tatum, Oscar Isaac and Kate Mara. His other currently listed future projects are Money Monster with Jodie Foster; talking canine drama Dogs Of Babel with Steve Carell; and teen cryogenics tale Noggin: another Lionsgate project he's planning to direct himself.
With a heavyweight like Zemeckis at the helm, Lionsgate are clearly eyeing Chaos Walking as their next big property post-Hunger Games. Fingers crossed the updates now start coming thicker and faster.