It's understandable that Hollywood would want to adapt books, comics and graphic novels from page to the big-screen. They have the advantage of having a pretty much automatic built-in audience who will end up forking over money to see the movie no matter what. And it also gives them a source material to constantly work off of.

However in the case of the children's book called Dinotrux, Hollywood hasn't even let the thing be published before they lay claim to the movie rights.

DreamWorks Animation has optioned the rights to make a CG animated film of the upcoming 32-page children's book, reportedly for a figure somewhere around the half-million dollar mark. Forgive me for assuming pretty much all of you don't know what the book is about, so here is the overall story:

Written by Chris Gall, the book takes place in a fictional prehistoric age, when the world was ruled by Dinotrux, creatures that were part trucks, part dinosaurs, with species like the Craneosauraus, Garbageadon and Tyrannosaurus Trux plowing and bulldozing their way across the terrain.

DreamWorks Animation, like most studios, has had their share of good and bad films. The Shrek series started off strong but many consider the third film to be the one which jumped the shark. Efforts such as Bee Movie, Flushed Away, and Over The Hedge were all at most received as mediocre. And 2008 gave us the best they've produced in years with Kung Fu Panda.

Since the Dinotrux book hasn't even been published yet, all we have to go on is the overall story (given above). Is it just me or does it sound suspiciously like the Dinobots from the Transformers universe? Perhaps it's different enough in content to stories of the Dinobots, but it just seems strikingly similar.

The Dinotrux book is to be published in April this year.

Sources: ComingSoon.net and Variety