EXCLUSIVE: After trying since 2008 to turn Vince Flynn’s bestselling novel series into an action franchise, CBS Films thinks it has found the actor to play terrorist hunter Mitch Rapp. I’m told that CBS Films has offered Chris Hemsworth $10 million to star in American Assassin.

While it is the 11th book in Flynn’s series of espionage novels, American Assassin is an ideal place to start a movie franchise. The novel is a prequel that explains how tragedy transformed Rapp from a college scholar and athlete into a ruthless hunter of terrorists for the CIA. Bruce Willis is also in talks, to play Rapp’s mentor. The film will be directed by Jeffrey Nachmanoff, who has covered the terrorist hunting terrain directing episodes of Showtime’s Homeland and also helming the Don Cheadle thriller Traitor. Nachmanoff also co-wrote with Roland Emmerich The Day After Tomorrow and helmed the pilot for the Dick Wolf-produced NBC series Chicago Fire.

The most recent script draft was written by Mike Finch, who took over a draft written by Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz, when Zwick was going to direct. CBS Films Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Nick Wechsler are producing.

Hemsworth is proving to be a go-to young guy for big ticket Hollywood fare, particularly after he was part of the blockbuster The Avengers and also Snow White And The Huntsman. He’s shooting a Thor sequel and then will star in the Steven Spielberg-directed Robopocalypse, with Anne Hathaway. Let’s see how this one plays out.