John Krasinski is to direct upcoming sci-fi thriller 'Life on Mars'.

John Krasinski

John Krasinski

The 'Quiet Place' actor-and-director is to adapt Cecil Castellucci's short story 'We Have Always Lived on Mars' for the big screen, with the movie focusing on a female descendant of a Martian colony that has been abandoned by Earth following a cataclysm, whose world is thrown into chaos when she discovers she can breathe the air on Mars.

The 38-year-old star will reteam with Michael Bay, Andrew Form and Brad Fuller from Platinum Dunes - who produced 'A Quiet Place' - to work on the project with Paramount looking to distribute the movie.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, John - who starred in 'A Quiet Place' with his wife Emily Blunt - isn't planning to appear in the movie and hasn't yet decided whether he'll write the script or hire someone else.

Meanwhile, John has also admitted Paramount would like to see 'A Quiet Place' spawn spin-off movies.

He said: "[The studio] wanted to potentially build a world. If these people are living through it poorly, are there other people living through it well? Is there some other way to survive? It's interesting."

With his horror movies, the filmmaker was keen to "break all the rules" he'd seen in other monster movies.

He said: "I wanted to break all the rules or the conventions that I had seen in alien movies, which is a speech from the President, people deciding how to survive. There was no deciding, it just happened so fast that you either survived or you didn't. It puts these people in a very tense place."