The long-gestating "Atlas Shrugged", the film adaptation of Ayn Rand's book, may be inching forward.

Charlize Theron's interest in the project has apparently spurred Lionsgate to considering firing the starting pistol.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Theron has been eager to play the role but has been concerned that a feature would lose many of the nuances of the monster-sized novel. Solution? Theron wants to do a mini-series, not a movie. It'd screen on Epix, the pay-cable network Lionsgate is forming with MGM and Viacom/Paramount.

A 1,000-page novel filled with Rand’s ideas about the future of Western civilization, “Atlas” centers on Dagny Taggart, a railroad executive trying to keep her corporation competitive in a world she sees as hostile to innovation. Among its most famous passages is a 50-page speech from mysterious character John Galt, regarded as a veiled expression of Rand’s own ideas.

Angelina Jolie had been loosely attached to the material with the Baldwins but has a number of projects that could go first, and producers are keen to shoot “Atlas” next year. That’s in part because of the timeliness of the material but, more important, because an option with the Rand estate expires if principal photography does not begin in 2010.