The Hunt For Atlantis In The Works At Netflix

Netflix has picked up The Hunt For Atlantis, a new film from writer/producer Aaron Berg that they hope will be the first in a franchise based on the Wilde/Chase books from author Andy McDermott. There are 15 books in the series, which launched with the 2007 The Hunt For Atlantis. In the book, years after the death of her parents but still haunted by it an NYU arhaeology grad student finds herself teaming up with an ex-SAS bodyguard and an accentric billionaire to search for the lost city of Atlantis, in the hopes of stopping a dangerous organization from obtaining the mystical powers that sank it.

Where do you go after you discover Atlantis in the first of 15 books? Well, later installments sent Nina Wilde and Eddie Chase after Excalibur, the great hall of Valhalla, the Fountain of Youth, and El Dorado.

Berg has been working on the project since July of last year, with Netflix coming on to provide it with a huge built-in audience and the money to get made today. With increasing competition in the streaming market and competitors like HBO Max and Disney+ that are owned by the same studios providing top-tier content to Netflix, the streamer has expressed a desire to build some native blockbuster franchises that don't rely on licensing someone else's content.

In addition to more than a dozen Nina Wilde/Eddie Chase books written since 2007, McDermott has also written a pair of unrelated books, including the recently-released Operative 66.

Deadline, who broke the Netflix news, reports that as part of moving to the streaming giant, the movie has added 6th & Idaho's Matt Reeves and Adam Kassan as producers. Reeves, of course, is just getting back to work shooting The Batman for Warner Bros., starring Robert Pattinson and set in a continuity separate from the shared universe of DC movies occupied by things like Wonder Woman 1984 and The Suicide Squad.

In terms of popularity among audiences and a prolific writer, these fall into the category of something like Lee Child's Jack Reacher novels. After getting a pair of feature films, Reacher will appear in a TV series, played by Titans star Alan Ritchson, in 2021. The goal there will be to create something that will appeal more to the hardcore fans, who always argued that using Tom Cruise in the role was more about selling tickets than telling the stories.