The Rock To Help Launch Robert Ludlum Cinematic Universe

Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, between working on DC's forthcoming Shazam! movie and trying to build a franchise around Baywatch, will apparently be spearheading a "shared universe" series of movies set in the world of Robert Ludlum novels, THR reports.

Ludlum, who died in 2001, has dozens of best-sellers with millions of copies in print, and created the character of Jason Bourne, who has been one of the biggest new action heroes to hit Hollywood in the last 20 years.

Johnson will star in The Janson Directive, written by James Vanderbilt from a story by Akiva Goldsman.

The Parsifal Mosaic, The Sigma Protocol and Covert One are among the Ludlum books which were already in devleopment at Universal; Vanderbilt and his partners at Mythology Entertainment are teaming with Captivate Entertainment to bring the disparate projects under one roof to both speed along the development process and create a cohesive universe for all of the films.