Chris Hemsworth attached to 'The Heart of the Sea'

Actor Chris Hemsworth is reportedly attached to "The Heart of the Sea," based on the real-life events that were the inspiration for Herman Meville's "Moby Dick."

The story inspired "Moby Dick."

According to Deadline, no studio has signed the project as yet, but several are giving it a look, including Dreamworks.

The movie, if it happens, would be based on the Nathaniel Philbrick's National Book Award-winning work "The Heart of the Sea," which follows the real-life story of the whaling ship Essex destroyed by a sperm whale in 1820.

Deadine is reporting that the project's producers include Joe Roth, Paula Weinstein, Will Ward and Palek Patel, and the script was written by Charles Leavitt ("Blood Diamond").

Philbrick's website offers a more detailed synopsis of the story:

The ordeal of the whaleship Essex was an event as mythic in the nineteenth century as the sinking of the Titanic was in the twentieth. In 1819, the Essex left Nantucket for the South Pacific with twenty crew members aboard. In the middle of the South Pacific the ship was rammed and sunk by an angry sperm whale. The crew drifted for more than ninety days in three tiny whaleboats, succumbing to weather, hunger, disease, and ultimately turning to drastic measures in the fight for survival.

Hemsworth was most recently seen in "Snow White and the Huntsman" and is expected to begin filming next month on "Thor 2," reprising his title role, which is also portrayed in this summer's "The Avengers."

In "The Heart of the Sea," Hemsworth would play the ship's first mate.