Doug Liman Will Get Into The YA Game With UNEARTHED

Director Doug Liman, who earned a 10-year "Goodwill Pass" from the Birth.Movies.Death. staff with 2014's Edge Of Tomorrow (and who appears to have another homerun on his hands with this year's American Made) has just signed on to another new project: an adaptation of Amie Kauffman and Meagan Spooner's forthcoming YA novel, Unearthed.

What's Unearthed about? Glad you asked. Take it away, THR:

"Set in a distant future where Earth has been undone by environmental disaster, Unearthed sees a scholar and a scavenger reluctantly team-up to venture to the planet of a now-extinct alien race. With the promise of a salve for the Earth, the two must work together to explore an ancient alien temple and finds its life-altering secrets. But the deeper they go, the more the two discover they may not be help the Earth but rather hasten its destruction.

The book is due to be published in January 2018 and has been described as a spacebound Tomb Raider meets Indiana Jones."

Real talk: I can't help but roll my eyes at yet another YA novel set "in a distant future where Earth has been undone by environmental disaster", but I'm totally willing to overlook all that since everything else here sounds pretty cool: an extinct alien planet? Alien temples filled with secrets and danger? Name-dropping Indiana Jones? Oh, yes. You have our attention, Doug Liman. 

Nothing more's known about when Unearthed might start shooting, but it's definitely a ways off: Liman's got at least one other movie to get to before then (the Daisy Ridley-starring Chaos Walking). Stay tuned for further updates as they roll in.

In the meantime: Edge Of Tomorrow still owns. Discuss.

(Note: Header photo used with permission via Flickr)