The latest film to exploit the literary legacy of Jane Austen will be “Austenland.” Currently in post-production, the romantic comedy is an adaptation of Shannon Hale’s 2007 chick lit novel about an American career woman, Jane Hayes, visiting a British Regency-era theme park for Austenites who get to act our their fantasies with actors playing Austen characters.

Like Bridget Jones before her, Jane (played by Keri Russell in the movie) is obsessed with Colin Firth’s Mr. Darcy – really? – of the  celebrated 1995 BBC miniseries “Pride and Prejudice.” Stephenie Meyer, the millionairess author of the four “Twilight” novels, is producing the film. Hale’s follow-up novel, “Midnight in Austenland,” was published by Bloomsbury last week.

“Austenland” is primarily about fandom, as was the 2007 chick flick “The Jane Austen Book Club," directed by Robin Swicord. “It’s not about Jane Austen’s life and works,” Meyer told Screen Daily. “It’s about people who love them. We’re having fun with what a lot of us are, which is Jane Austen fans who’d like to be able to get into that story if we can. It’s a comedy – this is not an Oscar-bait, people-are-going-to-die, tears movie. It’s fun, and we’re passionate about the fun.”

Despite the 21^st century adulation, however, Jane Austen is continuing to spin in her grave in Winchester Cathedral.

A decade and a half before “Downton Abbey,” the 1995 “Pride and Prejudice,” adapted by Andrew Davies, was a watershed moment for the “Masterpiece Theater” ilk of classy period adaptations. There was potent chemistry between Firth and Jennifer Ehle, whose Elizabeth Bennet was a convincing proto-feminist heroine, a rougher and more vibrant period feel than was usual, and a superb supporting cast (including Alison Steadman,  Julie Sawalha, and David Bamber). Since then there have been 10 straight period film and TV adaptations of Austen’s novels – three of “Emma,” two each of “Sense and Sensibility” and “Mansfield Park,” and one each of “Pride and Prejudice,” “Northanger Abbey,” and “Persuasion.” Most of these had some merit, though the cleavage-baring 2007 “Mansfield Park” looked as if it were based on a Barbara Cartland novel rather than an Austen. But there have, too, been some silly modernizations; Bollywood’s “Bride & Prejudice” (2004); the highly speculative Austen biopic, “Becoming Jane” (2007); and the daft time-travel miniseries “Lost in Austen” (2008).

Additionally, there has been a drove of mostly sexy fiction sequels and retakes — including three by Linda Berdoll, seven by Enid Wilson, and Seth Grahame-Smith’s “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” — that have continued to sap the virility of Austen’s most famous male character. Crime veteran P.D. James’s “Death Comes to Pemberley,” published last year, is the first by a literary novelist.

One hope for “Austenland” is that it was directed by Jerusha Hess, who co-wrote the screenplay with Hale. Hess also co-wrote “Napoleon Dynamite,” one of the funniest American comedies of the '00s, with its director, her husband Jared Hess. As well as Russell, the cast includes Jennifer Coolidge, Jane Seymour, Bret McKenzie, and J.J. Feild as the male lead. In more serious vein, Feild was an excellent Henry Tilney in Davies’s version of “Northanger Abbey” (2007), which gave Carey Mulligan her second Austen role (following the 2005 “Pride and Prejudice”) and alerted viewers to the talent of Felicity Jones (“Like Crazy”).

The problem with so much filmed and newly written Austenia, of course, is that it risks drawing a fresh readership away from Austen’s six novels and diluting the power that readers bring to their private visualizing of places, situations, and, especially, characters. For a generation of women (and some men), Fitzwilliam Darcy no longer has the face of the man their imaginations see than the face – and sodden-shirted chest – of Colin Firth. So iconic is Firth’s dousing in “Pride and Prejudice,” in fact, that he spoofed it when his character was tossed out of the schoolgirls’ dorm into an ornamental pond in 2007’s “St. Trinians.” That was amusing. “Lost in Austen”’s jokey riff on Darcy/Firth’s lake scene was, well, dead in the water.

Colin Firth strips in “Pride and Prejudice”: