A dystopian world where there are no women and all living creatures can hear each others' thoughts in a stream of images, words, and sounds called Noise.
Chaos Walking is a 2021 American dystopian action film directed by Doug Liman from a screenplay by Patrick Ness and Christopher Ford. It is based on the sci-fi trilogy Chaos Walking, adapting its first book, 2008's The Knife of Never Letting Go by Ness.
The film stars Daisy Ridley and Tom Holland, along with Mads Mikkelsen, Demián Bichir, Cynthia Erivo, Nick Jonas, and David Oyelowo, and follows a young man (Holland) who lives in a dystopian world where there are no women and all living creatures can hear each other's thoughts in a stream of images, words, and sounds called "Noise." When a woman (Ridley) crash lands onto the planet, he must help her escape danger.
Announced in 2011, the film had undergone several rewrites from a first script draft written by Charlie Kaufman, with Jamie Linden, John Lee Hancock, Gary Spinelli, Lindsey Beer, Christopher Ford, and Ness revising the screenplay further. Liman was later announced as the director in 2016, with principal photography beginning in 2017.
Originally set to release on March 1, 2019, it was removed from schedule to accommodate the film's reshoots in April 2019 following poor test screenings.
Chaos Walking was theatrically released in the United States on March 5, 2021. The film has grossed $7 million worldwide against its $100 million budget, resulting in a write-down for the studio.
The film received generally negative reviews from critics, with Rotten Tomatoes saying it "badly bungles its premise and limps toward the finish."