By Claude Brodesser and Dave McNary

HOLLYWOOD (Variety) - Sean Connery is in final negotiations to star in "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen," a period thriller starring famous literary characters.

He would play Allan Quatermain, the head of a group of superpowered individuals culled from great adventure literature: Mina Harker from "Dracula," the Invisible Man, Dr. Henry Jekyll, Captain Nemo, Dorian Gray and their American liaison, police detective Thomas Sawyer.

Sensing trouble for the Empire in the future, Queen Victoria orders the Secret Service secretly to put the seemingly disparate team together to stop a villain intent on turning the nations of the world against one another for his own personal gain.

Quatermain, created in the 1880s by Henry Rider Haggard, is considered the precursor to Indiana Jones, a character familiar to Connery, who played Jones' father in 1989 picture "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade."

The 20th Century Fox project, based on the Wildstorm comic book by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill, will be filmed this summer in the Czech Republic and Morocco.