In the wake of Hunger Games success, Lionsgate Entertainment acquired the film rights to the young-adult fantasy series, Patrick Ness‘ Chaos Walking trilogy. Academy Award-winning screenwriter Charlie Kaufman will adapt the first book, The Knife of Never Letting Go.

Here’s more from Deadline: ”The Carnegie Medal winning book is 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, chaos ensues, and a corrupt autocrat threatens to take control of the human settlements and wage war with the indigenous alien race.”

Kaufman won the 2004 Oscar in the Best Original Screenplay category for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. He also wrote the scripts for the adaptation of Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and Adaptation (based The Orchid Thief).

Ness has published an adult novel, a short story collection and four books for children. He has worked as a journalist and taught creative writing at Oxford University. His 2011 title, A Monster Calls, began as an idea from the late author Siobhan Dowd. Ness wrote and published the story for Dowd.