The Gotham Group has picked up screen rights for the underwater adventure Dark Life, from author Kat Falls.

According to Variety, the book will be published in May by Scholastic, and is set in a near-future world in which rising ocean levels and natural catastrophes have led some people to homestead on the ocean floor. The story centers on an underwater teenage boy and a surface girl who join forces to uncover a government conspiracy.

"We fell in love with the idea of an underwater Western," said Gotham's Ellen Goldsmith-Vein, who praised Falls for creating a "thoroughly original world."

No production date has been set.