Avatar star, Sam Worthington joins new space adventure

[HMG] – Being the lead in a $2.7-billion box office monster like Avatar does wonders for your Hollywood profile, and Sam Worthington is enjoying the ride.

Now able to go out in public after the rapturous fans have calmed down, Sam, 33, has chosen a project at Dreamworks as his next role, and it sees him exploring space once again. He’s now signed to play Allan Quatermain, the lead character in a series of spellbinding novels by the famed British author, Sir Henry Rider Haggard.

The original stories, published in the mid-1880′s cast Quatermain as a big-game hunter in Africa. In Dreamworks’ version humans have abandoned the Earth and now live in space, but Quatermain is forced to return and engage in an epic adventure that circles the planet.

And Dreamworks is the perfect studio to create such a story – Quatermain was the character on which their other highly successful, square-jawed action hero was based — Indiana Jones.

It was also rare luck to get Sam for the part — Since ‘Avatar’ he’s been offered almost every script in development. He’s just opened in ‘Clash of the Titans’ with Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes, and he’s now shooting ‘The Fields’ about a Texas detective who teams up with a hard-bitten NYPD cop to explore and unravel unsolved murders.

There’s no director for Quatermain yet but THR says the script is being worked on by Mark Verheiden, whose previous credits include Battlestar Galactica, Smallville and Heroes. So that’s a plus. And apart from taking the lead, Sam will also make his bow as producer.

We’ll keep you advised as more details arrive…