Allan Quatermain novels getting the big screen treatment

This is some exciting news for book nerds like myself … it sounds like Dreamworks is going to be adapting the character of Allan Quatermain for the big screen, with Sam Worthington in the lead role.

For those who don’t know, Allan Quatermain is the adventurous explorer featured in Sir H. Rider Haggard’s novels King’s Solomon’s Mines and Allan Quatermain. Besides being credited as the inspiration for Indiana Jones (one of my all-time favorite movie franchises), the character of Allan Quartermain has previously found life on the big screen through Sean Connery in the adaptation of the comic book series, The League of Extraordinary Gentleman. (The comic and the movie feature legendary characters from literature, such as Mina Harker from Dracula, the Invisible Man, Dr. Jeckyl & Mr. Hyde, and Tom Sawyer! It’s sort of like a lit-fans ultimate cross-over fan fiction brought to life.)

Here’s more info on the Allan Quatermain movies from Reelz Channel:

Actor Sam Worthington has portrayed a lot of different genre characters during his relatively short career in Hollywood, from a cyborg (Terminator Salvation), to a blue alien (Avatar), to a godling (Clash of the Titans). Now, he’s adding futuristic adventurer to his resume. According to THR, Worthington will produce and star in Quatermain, a sci-fi adventure movie based on the character of Allan Quatermain from Victorian adventure writer Sir H. Rider Haggard‘s classic novels King Solomon’s Mines and Allan Quatermain.

Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines, first published in 1885, tells the story of Allan Quatermain, an English adventurer and hunter who travels into the unexplored jungles of Africa in search of an explorer that disappeared while searching for the legendary lost mines of the biblical King Solomon. The book, and its sequel, Allan Quatermain, are credited with launching the “Lost World” sub-genre of adventure fiction and have been adapted for the big screen more than a half-dozen times. […]

Quatermain is set up at DreamWorks and marks Worthington’s debut as a producer, joining Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, co-producers of The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. Mark Verheiden (My Name is Bruce) wrote the screenplay, which, according to THR, “is set in a time in which humans have left Earth and sees Quartermain return to the planet from a sojourn in space, embarking on another King Solomon’s Mines-style adventure but on a planetwide scale.” No director or release date have been announced as of yet.