'Area 51': Gale Anne Hurd's next big thing?

Producer Gale Anne Hurd, who has a massive hit on her hands with AMC's "The Walking Dead," is turning her attention to under-the-radar government operations. According to Deadline, Hurd has optioned the Annie Jacobsen book, "Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base" for development into a TV series.

Area 51, a military base in the Nevada desert, has long been mythologized as a government repository of alien carcasses and UFOs. In the book, Jacobsen talks to 19 former employees of the base who fill her in on some of the covert activities that took place there, allegedly including nuclear-weapons testing, secret supersonic jet development and secret fronts in the War on Terror.

Karl Gajdusek has been tapped as showrunner and the show will reportedly follow "two men working on the base who are thrust into danger when they uncover secrets that the government will protect at any cost."