The academics-turned-screenwriters claim they are currently in discussion with three major studios overseas about producing Olympia, their screenplay for what they call "an origin story for the modern Olympics".

"We realised no one had done a narrative about the first Olympics and the conditions they occurred in and how they came to be," says O'Kane, an anthropologist whose day job is consulting on native title claims. "We have scraps and titbits and ancient myths that have come down to us, but no clear story."

"The idea actually came from my wife, Maki, who is Japanese," explains Martino, who has a doctorate in classical history from Melbourne University. "We were watching the Beijing Games and she said people in Japan don't really know that much about the Olympics, and she asked, 'Where is the movie about the most-watched event on the planet?' And I looked into it and realised there wasn't one."

Put that way, it seems a no-brainer, and maybe someone with no brains would simply have taken a hop, skip and jump right into it. But Martino and O'Kane quickly realised that anything connected with the Olympics ran the risk of falling foul of the legal and commercial departments of the IOC.

Knowing that was a hurdle they'd have to cross sooner rather than later, they approached the International Olympics Committee in 2010. "We thought, as an academic courtesy, it would be politic to let them know," says Martino. "And things just grew from there."

He says they were cleared by three distinct divisions – information management, marketing and legal – "so we knew we had a clean bill of health. And that was very important as we were aspiring gold medallist writers."

By the time the Rio Games are over, they hope to have a firm offer on the table from a studio. They show me what appears to be a note from a script assessor who suggests "this could be the keystone historical epic of our generation … I love it! The characters are so strong and the action so very engaging". There is criticism in there too – it is "so very nerdy" in places, the assessor writes, "that I laugh" – but O'Kane and Martino claim the feedback is typical of what they've been hearing.

If it does get made it will be big – bigger even, they suggest, than Ben-Hur. "There's no way to talk down the costs of an epic," says Martino. "I think we'd be looking at $120 to $150 million, but it could realistically be as much as $200 million."

So it's a Hollywood production then? "We believe we can shoot the majority of it here."

But part of the attraction, adds O'Kane – who is blind in one eye and has recently taken to wearing a monocle because he kept losing his glasses – is that some of this origin story will be shot at the actual place of origin. "We're confident we'll be able to get permission to film at Olympus," he says.

He's also confident that Olympia is a tale audiences the world over will connect with.

"It's not a story that has a lot of gods and things in it – it's certainly not Clash of the Titans or Gods of Egypt," he says. "I'm interested in making something that's not anachronistic, that's true to its times, but is awake to the fact we're still essentially the same animal. It's more of a human story."

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