David Fincher Collaborator Says 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea Was "Very Close" to Happening

The screenwriter thinks the movie would have been very special.

By Russ Burlingame

David Fincher's aborted adaptation of Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea came closer to becoming a reality than anybody knew, according to Fincher's frequent collaborator Andrew Kevin Walker. Walker, a screenwriter who has worked with Fincher as far back as The Game,  worked on the screenplay for 20,000 Leagues, a project that Fincher was developing with Walt Disney Studios. The project didn't come together, and since then, Jules Verne's novel has stymied others, as well. Bryan Singer was set to direct 20,000 Leagues for 20th Century Fox, but that movie failed to come together before Singer did Bohemian Rhapsody -- the last mainstream American film he would make.

Disney, whose 1954 version is the definitive visual take on 20,000 Leagues (and who also had a 20,000 Leagues-themed submarine voyage at their theme parks for decades), also tried to develop a series for Disney+ that would have centered on Captain Nemo, the book's antagonist and the captain of the Nautilus...but that, too, was cancelled (although a couple of weeks ago, AMC revealed that they would save the series, which Disney had reportedly filmed before it was shelved).

Walker told Entertainment Weekly that the movie "was very close to getting made. That would have been the coolest Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea you could imagine. It was going to be a movie where parents would be as blown away as the kids."

The property is, of course, in the public domain, and there have been numerous other Captain Nemo stories over the years, including in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comics and movie, where Nemo was a key character. The character also appeared in Verne's novel The Mysterious Island, which has spawned its own adaptations. His most recent screen appearance was in Once Upon a Time, where he was played by Faran Tahir.

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Nautilus will follow Captain Nemo (Shazad Latif), an Indian Prince robbed of his birthright and family, a prisoner of the East India Mercantile Company and a man bent on revenge against the forces that have taken everything from him. 

The series also stars Georgia Flood as Humility Lucas, Thierry Frémont as Gustave Benoit, Pacharo Mzembe as Boniface, Arlo Green as Turan, Tyrone Ngatai as Kai, Ling Cooper Tang as Suyin, Andrew Shaw as Jiacomo, Ashan Kumar as Ranbir, Chum Ehelepola as Jagadish, Céline Menville as Loti, Kayden Price as Blaster, Damien Garvey as Director Crawley, Richard E. Grant as the leader of Karajaan, Muki Zubis as Casamir, Benedict Hardie as Cuff, Jacob Collins-Levy as Captain Youngblood, and Luke Arnold as Captain Billy Millais.

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