I Am Legend's Francis Lawrence is set to produce and direct a 13th Century fantasy adventure based around the travels of Venetian explorer Marco Polo.

Warner Bros. have bought a pitch from Adam Cooper and Bill Collage, reinventing the tale of the merchant who travelled around the Mongol empire of Kublai Khan for 24 years with his father and uncle. Rather than a biopic of Polo's travels, the writers have rethought the story as fantasy. "We see this as something that takes place in the Orient of our imagination amid the cultural clash of the East and the West," Cooper told Daily Variety.

Cooper and Collage recently reworked Herman Melville's Moby Dick for Wanted director Timur Bekmambetov and producer Scott Stuber at Universal, and are currently working on a reinvention of the Biblical tale of Moses for Fox.