Pirates Of The Caribbean 5 Director To Helm Michael Crichton's Micro

04/14/2017 05:09 pm EDT

According to Deadline, Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment is in negotiations with Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales and Kon-Tiki director, Joachim Rønning, to helm their feature film adaptation of Michael Crichton's final and posthumously published (passed away in 2008) novel, Micro — which was completed by science writer Richard Preston and released for distribution in 2011.

"Like Jurassic Park, the hope here is to launch another franchise with Micro," Deadline adds, "and the film will gear up for a fall shoot."

The film will be based on a script written by Darren Lemke, who previously scripted Goosebumps, Shrek Forever After, Jack The Giant Slayer and Turbo. Frank Marshall is producing and Sherri Crichton and Laurent Bouzereau are the executive producers.

"We are so pleased to have this opportunity to develop Micro," Spielberg said in 2015 after acquiring the film rights. "For Michael, size did matter whether it was for Jurassic's huge dinosaurs or Micro infinitely tiny humans."

Published in 2011 posthumously, Micro was completed by science writer Richard Preston.

The book's synopsis:

In a locked Honolulu office building, three men are found dead with no sign of struggle except for the ultrafine, razor-sharp cuts covering their bodies. The only clue left behind is a tiny bladed robot, nearly invisible to the human eye. In the lush forests of Oahu, groundbreaking technology has ushered in a revolutionary era of biological prospecting. Trillions of microorganisms, tens of thousands of bacteria species, are being discovered; they are feeding a search for priceless drugs and applications on a scale beyond anything previously imagined. In Cambridge, Massachusetts, seven graduate students at the forefront of their fields are recruited by a pioneering microbiology start-up. Nanigen MicroTechnologies dispatches the group to a mysterious lab in Hawaii, where they are promised access to tools that will open a whole new scientific frontier. But once in the Oahu rain forest, the scientists are thrust into a hostile wilderness that reveals profound and surprising dangers at every turn. Armed only with their knowledge of the natural world, they find themselves prey to a technology of radical and unbridled power. To survive, they must harness the inherent forces of nature itself.

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