Daisy Ridley, Tom Holland sci-fi “Chaos Walking” travels to Cannes

PanARMENIAN.Net - Lionsgate Intl. has added sci-fi drama “Chaos Walking”, directed by “The Bourne Identity” helmer Doug Liman, to its Cannes Market sales slate. The cast is led by “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” star Daisy Ridley and Tom Holland, who stars in “Spider-Man Homecoming”, Variety said.

The script, which is based on the book series by Patrick Ness (“A Monster Calls”), was written by John Lee Hancock (“Snow White and the Huntsman”), Ness, and Charlie Kaufman (“Being John Malkovich”). The movie is produced by Allison Shearmur, whose credits include “Star Wars: Rogue One” and “Cinderella,” and Doug Davison, whose credits include “The Departed.”

The film centers on Todd Hewitt (Holland), who lives in Prentisstown, “seemingly the last settlement on the distant, rugged planet of New World,” according to a statement. The village was colonized “a generation earlier by settlers from Earth seeking a better life, [but] has been reduced to a population of only men after a brutal war with New World’s indigenous alien race, the Spackle.”

Before losing the war, the Spackle released a virus that “infected the men with a plague they now call ‘The Noise’: a visual, background jabber that literally portrays each man’s thoughts and feelings for all to see.”

Todd is taken under the wing of the sly Mayor Prentiss, who has “the mysterious ability to control his own ‘Noise’. But that relationship is put to the test when Todd discovers an unsettling ‘silence’ in the surrounding forest and finds the last thing he ever expected: a woman named Viola [Ridley].”

Ness’ trilogy was described by Booklist as “the classical hero’s journey told as a nail-biting, pulse-pounding adventure.”