Writer-director Joby Harold is in negotiations to pen the adaptation of comicbook ATLANTIS RISING for DreamWorks and director Len Wiseman, per THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER.
Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci are producing the apocalyptic sci-fi project with Platinum Studios chairman and CEO Scott Mitchell Rosenberg, who created the ATLANTIS RISING series at Platinum. Randy Greenberg is exec producing.
"As a writer, Joby has an amazingly strong understanding of how to take genre seriously, which is prerequisite No. 1 for us when it comes to these kinds of movies," Kurtzman said. Kurtzman and Orci produced EAGLE EYE and scripted TRANSFORMERS and the upcoming spring release of STAR TREK.
DreamWorks is trying to get ATLANTIS into theaters in summer 2011 as a vfx-driven tentpole in the vein of James Cameron's ALIENS and THE ABYSS. Paramount has the option to co-finance and co-distribute as part of their separation agreement with DreamWorks.
The story starts when a seismic disturbance under the ocean causes the world's military forces to investigate the deepest parts of the sea, finding an underground civilization that starts a war with the land-dwelling humans.
"In all the classic versions of this kind of movie, the threat is always from the stars," Orci said. "The idea that it's somehow our cousins who went off in a different path of evolution who have been here, literally, underneath our oceans. ... That's fascinating, the idea of secrets right under your nose."
Platinum's COWBOYS & ALIENS is in development with Kurtzman and Orci at DreamWorks and Imagine Ent. in another potential partnership with Paramount.
Harold is also working on an adaptation of Frank Miller's comic RONIN at Warner Bros.
