Doug Liman In Talks For CHAOS WALKING Directing Gig, But What About GAMBIT?

Lionsgate has been trying to adapt Chaos Walking, Patrick Ness's best-selling trilogy of young adult novels, into a movie for at least five years at this point, and they even had Robert Zemeckis attached to direct it for a little while. Zemeckis has since moved on, but the script was written by Oscar winner Charlie Kaufman (Anomalisa, Being John Malkovich, Adaptation), so there's some hope that this franchise will turn out better than Lionsgate's latest attempt to replicate their Hunger Games success, Divergent. Here's the synopsis:

The Carnegie Medal winning books are set in a dystopian future with humans colonizing a distant earth-like planet. When an infection called the Noise suddenly makes all thought audible, privacy vanishes in an instant. In the ensuing chaos, a corrupt autocrat threatens to take control of the human settlements and wage war with the indigenous alien race, and only young Todd Hewitt holds the key to stopping planet wide-destruction.

Now THR reports that Edge of Tomorrow's Doug Liman is in negotiations to direct the film, which is aiming to begin production this fall. That seems like a big problem for Gambit, the long-brewing superhero film starring Channing Tatum that Liman was supposed to direct. That project has had its own trouble finding a director, and many fans thought those troubles were over when producers brought Liman in a few months ago. But if he's supposed to be shooting Chaos Walking in the fall, there's no way he'll also be filming Gambit around that time, meaning Gambit is either going to be delayed again or looking for another director altogether. The movie was initially supposed to come out in October of this year (four months from now), but now its very existence is unclear.

Meanwhile, Liman will shoot a smaller thriller called The Wall for Amazon before production begins on Chaos Walking.