Johansson orders from Amazon

While she was larking about on Bruckheimer flop The Island, Scarlett Johansson let it slip that she would love to appear on celluloid as a bad-ass gladiatrix. It just so happened that Island screenwriters Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci overheard their leading lady and voila! Amazon was born.

Set in 200 BC, Amazon casts the Lost In Translation star as a sword-wielding lovely out to exact revenge on the army that ravaged her homeland. Kurtzman and Orci have donned producer’s hats to chase down the cheques while writing duties have been handed off to relative newbies Dirk Blackman and Howard McCain, who recently wrote the Viking adventure Outlander for Harvey and Bob Weinstein’s imaginatively named new mini-studio, The Weinstein Company.

Outlander is due to go into production next year and will star Doom’s Karl Urban. No word yet on a start date for Amazon.