In a bizarre, fantasy-to-sci-fi gear-grind that has the potential to be as WTF-worthy as Highlander II: The Quickening, DreamWorks has announced that Avatar and Clash Of The Titans star Sam Worthington will play adventure hero Allan Quatermain in Quatermain, the latest movie based on H. Rider Haggard's venerable series of novels. A "sci-fi version" taking place in outer space in the far-off future (rather than on the Dark Continent during the Victorian Era), the film will find Quatermain returning to an abandoned Earth to seek a long-lost treasure.
Quatermain has long gotten the shaft from Hollywood—most recently in the Indiana Jones-spoofing, Richard Chamberlain films from the '90s, and then in 2003's lamentably bad Alan Moore adaptation, The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, in which Sean Connery played the character. The late Patrick Swayze also portrayed him in the 2004 Hallmark miniseries King Solomon's Mines, which didn't even bother spelling Quatermain's name right.