Filmmaker Circles “Atlantis” Adaptation

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water.

Writer-director Joby Harold is negotiating to write the adaptation of the comic book “Atlantis Rising” for DreamWorks.

Len Wiseman (”Live Free or Die Hard”) is attached to direct the apocalyptic science fiction project.

In “Atlantis,” an underworld civilization is discovered after seismic rumbles announce its presence. Hostilities with Earth’s land-dwellers ensue.

“In all the classic versions of this kind of movie, the threat is always from the stars,” said Roberto Orci, who will produce with his “Transformers” partner Alex Kurtzman.

“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.”

The newly independent DreamWorks envisions “Atlantis” as a big-budget, effects-driven sci-fi war movie in the vein of the James Cameron-directed “Aliens” and “The Abyss.” It hopes to release it in summer 2011.

Harold is adapting the Frank Miller comic “Ronin” for Warner Bros.