With Oz The Great And Powerful doing plenty of business at the box office, producer Joe Roth is staying on the hunt for other ideas to turn into movies. He’s now partnered with Legendary Pictures to scoop up Marcus Sakey’s new novel Brilliance.

The book is an X-Men style fable of a world where one per cent of children are born as savants with special powers. Called “brilliants,” many of them have gone on to do incredible things.

But, naturally, there are a few bad seeds, including one who has turned his powers to terrorism. Our hero is a federal agent, and another of the brilliants, who is using his skills to hunt down rogue members of his society. The novel hits bookshelves in July, and was the subject of a bidding war that came down to Fox and Legendary. The latter nabbed it and attached Roth and producing partner Palak Patel to shepherd it to the screen.

Sakey’s work has become popular with filmmakers: Ben Affleck optioned The Blade Itself back in 2008 (not to be confused with the Joe Abercrombie book of the same name) and Tobey Maguire is still attached to Good People, which at one point had original Dragon Tattoo director Niels Arden Oplev aboard to direct. Both appear to have vanished into the development mist for now, so Sakey will likely be hoping that Roth and co get Brilliance moving.