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Lionsgate has hired The Newsroom scribe Matthew Lopez to rewrite CHAOS WALKING, the YA movie that is slated to star Daisy Ridley and Tom Holland, the Tracking Board has exclusively learned.
Doug Liman will direct the movie and oversee the new draft from Lopez. Charlie Kaufman and Jamie Linden wrote previous drafts of the script. Doug Davison is producing through his Quadrant Pictures banner along with Allison Shearmur.
Chaos Walking is based on the first book in Patrick Ness’ best-selling trilogy. Speaking of which, Lionsgate already has its eye on the future of the franchise — a given considering the budding star power of Ridley (Star Wars) and Holland (Spider-Man) — and is said to be actively seeking filmmakers of Liman’s caliber for the potential sequel, should the first film be a success.
It’s entirely possible Liman could return, but he has a very busy schedule and didn’t return to direct the Jason Bourne sequels, plus Lionsgate swapped out the directors of Twilight, The Hunger Games and Divergent for their respective sequels.
Chaos Walking does not have an official start date yet but depending on how Lopez’s draft is received, it could go before cameras as soon as this summer.
The film takes place in a dystopian world where all women have been killed and there is no privacy, as all living creatures can hear one another’s thoughts in a stream of images, words and sounds known as “the Noise.”
Lopez wrote the Civil War play The Whipping Man as well as The Legend of Georgia McBride before joining HBO’s The Newsroom as a staff writer under showrunner Aaron Sorkin. His feature script Dr. Q, about an illegal immigrant who became the head of brain tumor surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital, is in development at Disney and Brad Pitt’s company Plan B.
Lopez is represented by CAA, Grandview and Gang, Tyre, Ramer & Brown.
Jeff Sneider | Editor in Chief
