Though director Marc Forster won’t be returning for Paramount’s World War Z sequel, he intends to stick with the action/thriller genre for the time-being.  Deadline reports that Forster is attached to helm an adaptation of the Pierce Brown novel Red Rising, which takes place on a desolate Mars and revolves around a lower-class protagonist who becomes a revolutionary and sets about upending an oppressive power.  Joe Roth is set to produce, and two studios are apparently in the mix to bring the project to fruition—though neither is Paramount, as Forster and the studio didn’t exactly part on good terms following the difficult production and post-production of World War Z.

Forster has always been a bit of a genre-hopper, making his action debut on the 2008 Bond film Quantum of Solace after helming lighter or more dramatic fare like Stranger Than Fiction and Finding Neverland.  Sci-fi is certainly new territory for the filmmaker, but it’ll be interesting to see how this one comes together.  Read the synopsis for the book after the jump.

Here's the synopsis for Pierce Brown's Red Rising:

Darrow is a Red, a member of the lowest caste in the color-coded society of the future. Like his fellow Reds, he works all day, believing that he and his people are making the surface of Mars livable for future generations. Yet he spends his life willingly, knowing that his blood and sweat will one day result in a better world for his children.

But Darrow and his kind have been betrayed. Soon he discovers that humanity reached the surface generations ago. Vast cities and sprawling parks spread across the planet. Darrow—and Reds like him—are nothing more than slaves to a decadent ruling class.

Inspired by a longing for justice, and driven by the memory of lost love, Darrow sacrifices everything to infiltrate the legendary Institute, a proving ground for the dominant Gold caste, where the next generation of humanity’s overlords struggle for power.  He will be forced to compete for his life and the very future of civilization against the best and most brutal of Society’s ruling class. There, he will stop at nothing to bring down his enemies . . . even if it means he has to become one of them to do so. [Amazon]