Merrick here...


Hoping to capitalize on the success of 300, Columbia is ramping up ANABASIS. It involves those damn Persians...the same troublemakers faced down by Gerard Butler and his fetishistically diapered army of well-chiseled sweaty men in 300.

The studio has acquired a pitch for an adaptation of "Anabasis," a memoir written around 400 B.C. by Xenophon, a Greek soldier who was among 10,000 elite mercenaries who attacked the Persian Empire and who led them back through hostile terrain after their leader was betrayed and slain.

...says THIS ARTICLE in Variety.

The project will be scripted by playwright Robert Schenkkan, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of THE KENTUCKY CYCLE.

Stranded deep in enemy territory, the Spartan general Clearchus and the other Greek senior officers were subsequently killed or captured by treachery on the part of the Persian satrap Tissaphernes. Xenophon played an instrumental role in encouraging the Greek army of 10,000 to march north to the Black Sea. Now abandoned in Mesopotamia, without supplies other than what they could obtain by force, the 10,000 had to fight their way northwards through Kurdistan and Armenia, making ad hoc decisions about their leadership, tactics, and destiny.

...explains THIS WIKI ENTRY.

The ANABASIS scenario was a template for Walter Hill's THE WARRIORS. This could be damn cool; wonder what role Shia will play?