Columbia Pictures joins Cross Creek Pictures and Doug Liman to adapt Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner’s UNEARTHED.

Late last year, we posted about Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner’s YA book Unearthed was going to be adapted into a movie, with Doug Liman attached to direct the project.

The film rights were originally acquired by Cross Creek Pictures but has now teamed up with Columbia Pictures, probably to add financial backing, at least partially. And it was announced earlier that Jez and John Henry Butterworth, who wrote the 2015 James Bond film, Spectre, will be the screenwriters for the film.

Unearthed is scheduled to be published January 8, 2018, and you can check out the book overview below:

When Earth intercepts a message from a long-extinct alien race, it seems like the solution the planet has been waiting for. The Undying’s advanced technology has the potential to undo environmental damage and turn lives around, and Gaia, their former home planet, is a treasure trove waiting to be uncovered.

For Jules Addison and his fellow scholars, the discovery of an alien culture offers unprecedented opportunity for study… as long as scavengers like Amelia Radcliffe don’t loot everything first. Mia and Jules’ different reasons for smuggling themselves onto Gaia put them immediately at odds, but after escaping a dangerous confrontation with other scavvers, they form a fragile alliance.

In order to penetrate the Undying temple and reach the tech and information hidden within, the two must decode the ancient race’s secrets and survive their traps. But the more they learn about the Undying, the more their presence in the temple seems to be part of a grand design that could spell the end of the human race…

Doug Liman is also currently working on pre-development for the adaptation of Patrick Ness’ Chaos Walking, which will star Daisy Ridley (Star Wars: The Force Awakens) and Tom Holland (Spider-Man: Homecoming).

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