John Krasinski Plans Sci-Fi Thriller 'Life on Mars' With 'Quiet Place' Team

[HARDY]

Paramount is in negotiations to pick up the project.

John Krasinski has found his follow-up to A Quiet Place, the surprise hit he directed and stars in with his wife, Emily Blunt.

Krasinski and the producers of A Quiet Place — Michael Bay, Andrew Form and Brad Fuller — are reteaming for Life on Mars.

Paramount, which distributed the horror movie, is in negotiations to pick up the project.

There is no writer on board and Krasinski, at this stage, is not expected to star. He will also be a producer on the project, alongside Allyson Seeger, an executive at his Sunday Night Productions banner.

The project will adapt a short story by Cecil Castellucci titled We Have Always Lived on Mars that centers on a woman who is among a handful of descendants of a Martian colony long-abandoned by Earth following a cataclysm. The woman one day finds she can breathe the air on Mars, upending her world and that of her fellow colonists.

Krasinski found the story and brought it to his Platinum Dunes cohorts, sources say.

A Quiet Place shook up the box office over the weekend when the pic opened to an astounding $50.2 million, surprising not just observers but those that made the film as well.

The Paramount movie, made for only $17 million, revolves around a family trying to survive in a world where any sound made attracts toothy aliens that kill. The pic is not only a box-office hit but a critical one as well, sitting with a 96 percent score on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.

Krasinski came to prominence acting on the NBC comedy The Office, but A Quiet Place has put him on the hot directors list.

It hasn't been an overnight journey and Krasinski made it the old-fashioned way, taking small steps and learning as he went. He made his directorial debut with 2009's Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, an adaptation of David Foster Wallace's collection of short stories. The film debuted at Sundance and earned $33,000 in limited release.

In 2016, Krasinski wrote and directed the comedy-drama The Hollars, in which he starred opposite Anna Kendrick. The film about a dysfunctional clan brought together by the life-threatening illness of its beloved matriarch earned $1 million at the box office.

Krasinski — who next stars as the title character in the upcoming Amazon series Jack Ryan, based on the Tom Clancy character and produced by Paramount Television — is repped by WME and Schreck Rose.