Lionsgate announced today that it has nabbed worldwide rights to Patrick Ness’ young-adult novel trilogy Chaos Walking to develop, produce and distribute films based on the series. The books, which won the Carnegie Medal, are set in a dystopian future where humans have colonized another planet and an infection makes all thought audible, destroying privacy. When an autocrat tries to take over the human settlements amid the chaos and wage war with the indigenous race, only one young man can stop the planet’s destruction. The Wall Street Journal has likened the novels to Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games, the wildly popular series that Lionsgate happens to be turning into movies starring Jennifer Lawrence. Candlewick Press publishes the Chaos Walking series in the U.S. and Walker Books in the UK. “A sense of urgency and momentum permeates these stories — it makes the books ones you can’t put down, and will make the movies ones you can’t miss on the big screen,” said Lionsgate co-chief operating officer and Motion Picture Group chairman Joe Drake in the release announcing the deal. “But apart from the story elements, the world in the stories is so vividly imagined. These are books, much like The Hunger Games, that we feel truly beg to be brought to life on film.”