EXCLUSIVE: Finishing this fall with The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2, Lionsgate is developing a grand-scale retelling of history’s greatest voyage home, Homer’s The Odyssey. To accomplish this epic, Lionsgate has enlisted Francis Lawrence to direct, Peter Craig to write and Nina Jacobson to produce. Lawrence directed three of the four Hunger Games films, Craig co-scripted the two installments of Mockingjay, and Jacobson and her Color Force have shepherded the franchise from the very beginning. Lawrence also helmed I Am Legend and Craig co-wrote The Town with Ben Affleck.

Lionsgate has put this on a fast track. The plan is to begin production early next year, right after the filmmakers complete promotion of Mockingjay – Part 2, which will be released November 20. Motion Picture Group co-president Erik Feig is overseeing this with exec production veep Jim Miller and development director James Myers. The project took root when Feig pitched it to Lawrence in Paris while they worked on the Hunger Games finale.

The epic has been done several times by Hollywood in films and TV, either directly or indirectly. Kirk Douglas starred in the 1954 film Ulysses, and films from Tim Burton’s Big Fish to Joel and Ethan Coen’s O Brother, Where Are Thou were said to be inspired by Homer’s famed poem about a long voyage home after the conclusion of the Trojan War.

CAA and 3 Arts rep Lawrence, Craig is repped by CAA and Management 360.