Pierce Brown‘s 2014 debut novel, Red Rising, spawned a bestselling sci-fi universe, seized resounding critical acclaim, and generated an ardent fan base almost instantaneously. The operatic saga’s dystopian setting, one defined by caste systems, mercurial intergalactic Houses, an uprising against a sadistic dictatorship, and young teenagers brutally fighting to the death, drew early comparisons to The Hunger Games by way of Star Wars. While formed around familiar concepts, Brown’s premise — modeled after 19th-century Irish immigrants and “the disenfranchisement of working classes,” as he told The New York Times — contains more distinctive substance than lackluster imitation.
Between Red Rising‘s concept, Brown’s sharp eye for cinematic action sequences, and the six-book series’ overwhelming success (over six million copies have sold as of 2024), bringing the author’s tale to the screen seems like a guaranteed slam-dunk. Yet somehow, for 12 years,every eager attempt to get an adaptation off the ground has failed.
What Is ‘Red Rising’ About?
After trying for almost a millennium, humanity has colonized multiple planets. A decidedly non-democratic government called the Society sorts individuals into fourteen color-coded factions. Each group fulfills its mandatory duties — except the Golds, the wealthiest and most traditionally beautiful, who bask in luxury and inflict rampant cruelty on a whim. Darrow, a newly married 16-year-old, lives deep underneath Mars’ surface with his fellow Reds. They’re the lowest of the lower castes, miners who risk their lives gathering materials to terraform the red planet’s surface. The Golds encourage the Reds to compete against one another for rationed resources, and they fatally punish even the slightest whisper of treason. When Darrow’s wife, Eo, dares to publicly sing a seditious song, Mars’ ruler orders her brutal execution. In the midst of his spiraling grief, Darrow discovers the galaxy’s oldest open secret: the Golds already live above ground inside a vast city and have no intention of rewarding the Reds’ toiling labor.
Collider Exclusive · Sci-Fi Survival Quiz Which Sci-Fi World Would You Survive? The Matrix · Mad Max · Blade Runner · Dune · Star Wars
Five universes. Five completely different ways the future went wrong — or sideways, or up in flames. Only one of them is the world your instincts were built for. Eight questions will figure out which dystopia, galaxy, or desert wasteland you’d actually make it out of alive.
💊The Matrix
🔥Mad Max
🌧️Blade Runner
🏜️Dune
🚀Star Wars
01
You sense something is deeply wrong with the world around you. What do you do? The first instinct is often the truest one.
02
In a world of scarcity, what resource do you guard most fiercely? What we protect reveals what we believe survival actually requires.
03
What kind of threat keeps you up at night? Fear is useful data — if you’re honest about what you’re actually afraid of.
04
How do you deal with authority you don’t trust? Every dystopia has a power structure. Your approach to it determines everything.
05
Which environment could you actually endure long-term? Survival isn’t just tactical — it’s physical, psychological, and very much about where you are.
06
Who do you want in your corner when things fall apart? The company you keep is the clearest signal of who you actually are.
07
Where do you draw the line — if you draw one at all? Every survivor eventually faces a moment that tests what they’re actually made of.
08
What would actually make survival worth it? Staying alive is one thing. Having a reason to is another.
Your Fate Has Been Calculated You’d Survive In…
Your answers point to the world your instincts were built for. This is the universe your temperament, your survival instincts, and your particular brand of stubbornness were made for.
The Resistance, Zion
The Matrix
You took the red pill a long time ago — probably before anyone offered it to you. You’re a systems thinker who can’t help but notice the seams in things.
You’re drawn to understanding how the system works before figuring out how to break it.
You’d find the Resistance, or it would find you — your instinct for spotting constructed realities is the machines’ worst nightmare.
You function best when you have access to information and the freedom to act on it.
The Matrix built an airtight prison. You’d be the one probing the walls for the door.
The Wasteland
Mad Max
The wasteland doesn’t reward the clever or the well-connected — it rewards those who are hard to kill and harder to break. That’s you.
You don’t need comfort, community, or a cause larger than the next horizon.
You need a vehicle, a clear threat, and enough fuel to outrun it — and you’re good at all three.
You are unsentimental enough to survive that world, and decent enough — just barely — to be something more than another raider.
In the wasteland, that distinction is everything.
Los Angeles, 2049
Blade Runner
You’d survive here because you know how to exist in moral grey areas without losing yourself completely.
You read people accurately, keep your circle small, and ask the questions others prefer not to answer.
In a city where humanity is a legal designation rather than a feeling, you hold onto something that keeps you functional.
You’re not a hero. But you’re not lost, either.
In Blade Runner’s world, that distinction is everything.
Arrakis
Dune
Arrakis is the most hostile environment in the known universe — and you are precisely the kind of person it rewards.
Patience, discipline, and political awareness are your core strengths — and on Arrakis, they’re survival tools.
You understand that the long game matters more than any single victory.
Others come to Dune and are consumed by it. You’d learn its logic and earn its respect.
In time, you wouldn’t just survive Arrakis — you’d begin to reshape it.
A Galaxy Far, Far Away
Star Wars
The galaxy far, far away is vast, loud, and in a constant state of violent political upheaval — and you wouldn’t have it any other way.
You find meaning in being part of something larger than yourself — a cause, a crew, a rebellion.
You’d gravitate toward the Rebellion, or the fringes, or whatever pocket of the galaxy still believes the Empire’s grip can be broken.
You fight — not because you have to, but because standing aside isn’t something you’re capable of.
In Star Wars, that willingness is what makes all the difference.
Darrow vows to avenge Eo’s death by accomplishing her revolutionary dreams. He joins a dissident movement and undergoes arduous physical alterations and mental training, transforming himself from a recognizable Red into someone with a Gold’s expected attributes. He might be a teenager forced into early maturity, but Darrow takes to infiltrating, manipulating, and toppling his oppressors like a fish to water. Impressed by this newcomer’s wily tactical intelligence, the Mars Institute accepts him as a student. There, Darrow and the children of the highest-ranked Houses must survive the Institute’s initial ritual — a series of deadly games designed to separate the so-called weak from the strong. Only those who prove their mettle will be rewarded via social advancement. The more Darrow plays the Society’s depraved psychological war games, the more his infamy as the charismatic, scythe-wielding “Reaper” grows.
Plans for a ‘Red Rising’ Movie or Series Have Never Moved Past the Development Stage
A cropped version of the Red Rising coverImage via Del Rey Books
Readers have raised valid critiques concerning Red Rising‘s rockier moments. Darrow’s a little too conveniently skilled at everything, the class inequality dissection falls short at times, and outdated approaches to certain female characters miss marks on the representation front (Eo is the most straightforward example of the “women in refrigerators” trope). All that said, Brown’s character development improves alongside his authorial craft and the space opera’s massive scope.The series gathers greater and greater steam until it explodes into a compulsively readable hurricane, which is a compliment.
The imaginative action set pieces are practically made for a blockbuster-sized budget. Vast in scale and as tightly formed as a Rube Goldberg machine, they crackle with kinetic suspense, never granting readers time to breathe and doling out tragic stakes without remorse, especially once every chess piece shifts into interstellar civil war. The Roman history and mythology influences mesh with the Golds’ elaborate political subterfuge and disproportionate excess. On the opposite side, where insurgents fight tooth-and-nail for their freedom, Brown explores rebellion logistics like a philosophical quandary; dismantling a tyrannical empire is all well and good, but resistance fighters have a moral obligation to provide for innocent civilians after they’ve devastated crucial infrastructure and assumed bureaucratic authority. As the savior-hero who seeks vengeance but despises adopting his persecutors’ bloodthirsty methodology, Darrow wrestles with these dilemmas while outwitting grisly psychopaths and befriending allies he may need to betray.
Mere months after Red Rising hit bookshelves, Universal Pictures outbid Sony Pictures to secure the film rights in a seven-figure deal. Marc Forster (World War Z) boarded as the director, while Brown drafted several screenplays. Progress stalled for several years, and the rights reverted to Brown. In late 2018, he announced he was actively collaborating with a director and a showrunner on a streaming television series, and had a major studio in his corner. Fast-forward to this March, and Brown revealed that the current TV vision is dead on arrival. He explained:
“Unfortunately, we just couldn’t get it to a place where [the studio] felt confident…I only found out in October of last year that the project wouldn’t be going forward.”
However, Brown teased a bright side to this second rejection: “I think I’ll be able to announce something new that I have with regard to a live adaptation, which is not that TV show.” Garrett and Brown agreed that perhaps the “third time’s the charm” for Red Rising finally elevating off the page into the realm of visual spectacle. Hopefully, the idiom holds true. This modern magnum opus, while needing some retroactive adjustments, deserves to be rescued from development hell and realized in its full grandeur.
