In 2005, Austrailian author Matthew Reilly published a book called "Seven Ancient Wonders". In the book, a former military man named Jack West Jr. leads a small team of soldiers and specialists from different countries to track down pieces of an ancient capstone. They go on this mission to stop other nefarious nations from getting their hands on the power that can be unleashed using the capstone. Each piece of the capstone was hidden among the seven wonders of the ancient world: the Great Pyramid of Giza, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, the Colossus of Rhodes, and the Lighthouse of Alexandria.
The book and its sequel, "Six Sacred Stones" (both of which I really enjoyed), read like a pure action/adventure movie. Basically, Indiana Jones meets National Treasure. Deadline reports that ABC has bought a show based on the book from North Country writer Michael Seitzman and producer Mark Gordon. The first season of the show will reportedly be based on the first two books in the series (there is a third book called "The Five Greatest Warriors") and the pilot will be written by Seitzman.
Seitzman said, “They feel like big boyhood and girlhood adventure stories; they are really fun and remind me of all the movies in the genre I loved."
Personally, I've always wanted to see these books on either the big or small screen, because I'm a sucker for archeological/adventure stories. I'm curious as to how much of the story will be changed, though. Will they end up keeping the very multicultural team under Jack's leadership? Hopefully we'll know more as the show goes further into development.
Thank you for this post! This has helped me a lot!