He already has one person associated with a massive franchise in his Chaos Walking cast, and now Doug Liman is looking to add another. Tom Holland is in talks to join Daisy Ridley in the YA adaptation.
The film based on A Monster Calls writer Patrick Ness' dystopian novels has been in the works for a while now, going through at least one other director and seeing script drafts from Charlie Kaufman and Money Monster's Jamie Linden.
Ness’ trilogy – The Knife Of Never Letting Go, The Ask And The Answer and Monsters Of Men – finds humankind in a dark 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 (Holland, assuming he signs on), 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 (Ridley), who is the source of a precious patch of silence.
With the casting finally falling into place, it would seem that Chaos Walking is finally ready to get moving itself. Holland, of course, is the current Spider-Man, having made his debut in Captain America: Civil War. He'll be back on our screens as the web-slinger in Spider-Man: Homecoming, due on our screens 7 July next year.