Penn Sails the Argo

Zak Penn (“The Incredible Hulk,” “The X-Men,” the upcoming “The Avengers”) is getting on the latest Greek craze and will climb on board the good ship Argo to bring the epic tale of “The Argonauts” to the bigs screen.

20th Century Fox has commissioned the director to take the wheel of the ship and try to steer it through the new maze of Greek mythology tales that will be sailing the trecherous waters of the Hollywood money machine.

Ever since the success of “Gladiator” “300,” and HBO’s “Rome,” everybody in Hollywood, and throughout the movie-making industry want to cash-in on the desire from fans for more Roman and Greek films and programming centered around the cultural mythos of those two great ancient superpowers.

Some other projects on tap for future films is the Warner Bros. remake of “Clash of the Titans,” “War of the Gods” to be helmed by Brett Ratner; as we mentioned on one of our previous shows, a film based on the memoirs of a greek soldier titled “Anabasis,” Peter Berg’s upcoming “Hercules: The Thracian Wars,” and a sequel to Frank Miller’s “300.” Even the television network’s are trying to filter-off some of that enthusiasm with NBC set to do a series based on the Roman/Jewish tale of “Ben-Hur.” The epic 1959 film starred Charlton Heston and was based on the novel written by Lew Wallace.

“The Argonauts” will be based on Penn’s on ideas about the classic Greek tale. In the original epic, the Argonauts were a band of heroic sailors who set sail with Jason and traveled to Colchis in his quest to find the Golden Fleece. The ship they traveled on was named Argo.

[The Argonauts, a painting by Lorenzo Costa in the Civic Museum, Padua, Italy]