Lionsgate plan to make Chaos Walking trilogy the next Hunger Games

Having seen their recent adaptation of The Hunger Games score big among critics and audiences alike, Lionsgate has taken control of another ludicrously popular teenage franchise in the form of the Chaos Walking series.

Patrick Ness's futuristic trilogy follows the exploits of young Todd Hewitt, a boy living in a dystopian city presided over by the tyrannical Mayor Prentiss. Such is the mayor's megalomania, he's managed to keep his citizens in the dark to the extent that they have no knowledge that any world exists beyond the city walls.

We earmarked the series as a potential successor to the Harry Potter series in a feature about books that could be movie franchises published last year , and Lionsgate clearly feel that the property could be another big hitter at the box office.

Encouragingly, they've already got somebody in place to adapt the source material into a screenplay, and still more excitingly, that writer is none other than Charlie Kaufman, of Adaptation fame.

At this stage, he's only been hired to adapt the first book in the series, The Knife Of Never Letting Go , but should that be a success, we'd be surprised if he wasn't also offered The Ask And The Answer and Monsters Of Men .

There's no word on a production schedule as yet, but we'll be keeping an eye on this one as it develops. Next stop, finding a director. Spike Jonze, anyone?