After becoming the first-time director with the highest opening weekend ever (“Pitch Perfect 2”), Elizabeth Banks should be in a promising place to negotiate her next project.
Banks is making the most of her momentum by engaging in talks to helm Universal’s “Red Queen,” an effects-driven adaptation of Victoria Aveyard’s YA dystopian fantasy. Described as a combination of “The Hunger Games,” “X-Men,” “Game of Thrones” and “Cinderella,” “Red Queen” takes place in a world where supernatural silver-blooded elites rule over the red-blooded hoi polloi.
When an urchin girl with red blood displays the special powers of the silver-blooded aristocracy, the king gives her a new identity as a lost princess who’ll reclaim her royal status through marriage with the prince. The girl then becomes torn between the seductive comforts of the upper class and the rising rebellion of red-blooded dissidents determined to start a revolution.
A screenwriter has been lined up in Gennifer Hutchison (“Breaking Bad,” “Better Call Saul”), but The Hollywood Reporter notes that “Red Queen” is still in development and thus unlikely to be Banks’ next directorial project.
[via THR]
