Lawsuit time against Atlas Shrugged?

That’s what appears to be in the immediate future for the production of Atlas Shrugged, the Ayn Rand novel turned feature that’s currently being directed by Paul Johansson. You see, Stephen Polk was originally set to direct the novel adaptation, but John Aglialoro and others decided that wouldn’t be the best decision. It’s a real shame that Polk didn’t really get the memo until he checked out the Variety piece that came up yesterday further confirming that he’s not attached at all.

Deadline got to speak with Polk, who’s already hiring a lawyer to deal with this in a nice legal fashion. Here’s what he had to say on the pretty messy situation.:

“I had some real names seriously interested, but it had to be a real feature film, and I feel like I had the rug pulled out from under me,” Polk said. “When we talked about cast, even B-list cast, they were like, ‘we don’t need names.’ It was great material, people were interested, but there were red flags. It’s devastating to me. They replaced me with a TV actor, this has TV written all over it. They’ve fired other people. I was trying to embrace the spirit of Atlas Shrugged, and it will be interesting to see if they can still pull it off.”

Atlas Shrugged recently started principal photography with the likes of Taylor Schilling, Grant Bowler and Michael Lerner as part of the cast. The film is expected to be finished for release sometime in 2011, but at this point if Polk decides to go head first into a lawsuit production could stall.