Randall Wallace (Braveheart, We Were Soldiers) Hired To Rewrite Captain Nemo

[Diesel]

Braveheart scribe Randall Wallace has been hired to rewrite Disney’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Captain Nemo, which is being developed for McG. Not a good sign for the project, which has already had a couple notable writers. Geek screenwriter Justin Marks (Masters of the Universe, Super Max) was hired in February to rewrite Bill Marsilli’s (Deja Vu) original draft. Wallace is squeezing the Nemo “writing gig” in before he goes off to direct the racehorse drama Secretariat in September. Wallace, who was nominated for an Oscar for writing Braveheart, has since been credited with Pearl Harbor, We Were Soldiers, and The Rookie.

The film will tell the origin story of Nemo and his warship, the Nautilus. The unofficial logline reads:

“A fugitive whaler teams up with a naturalist, a mysterious woman and a captain of a futuristic submarine, to search for a lost underwater civilization that holds libraries of vast knowledge and a weapon with the power to destroy mankind.”

McG has said publicly that he wants to cast Will Smith as the film’s title character. Disney hopes to make the film later this year in Australia, and McG is slotting it as his next. This also seems like the perfect type of movie for Disney to release in Disney Digital 3-D.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was the first live action film in Walt Disney history, and is considered by many to be the most mature film they have ever produced. Based on the Jules Verne novel of the same name, the 1954 film told the story of a ship sent to investigate a wave of mysterious sinkings encounters the advanced submarine, the Nautilus, commanded by Captain Nemo.The film is best remembered for the giant-squid battle and for the Nautilus itself. It won two Academy Awards in 1955 for Best Effects and Set Decoration, and was also nominated for Best Film Editing.

What do you guys think of this news?
Do you like Randall Wallace as the person to re-write?

Is anyone anticipating this film?

I'm looking forward to more details on this in the future, and would love for this to come out good.

[PH3AR]

Not to sure randall is the guy for this kind of movie, but we'll see how it turns out

[GreenScar]

Not if McG is still in line for T5. Forget everything else and get to work!

[Diesel]

Originally Posted by GreenScar

Not if McG is still in line for T5. Forget everything else and get to work!

EXACTLY!

Take McG off of this and set him to work on Terminator 5/6!!

[Diesel]

Disney Halts ‘20,000 Leagues,’ McG Off The Project

Wow, I didn’t see this one coming. According to Variety, Disney has halted moving forward with their remake of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. On top of that, McG, who was set to direct, is off the project, and will now concentrate on other things such as the Warner Bros. drama, Dead Spy Running.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea seemed to be moving ahead pretty well, with a tentative shooting start of February, 2010. McG even said not that long ago that they’d already looked at different shooting locations including Japan, France and Canada. The Terminator Salvation director sounded pretty enthusiastic back in August when he talked about such things as how he was planning on contemporizing the story while still maintaining the spirit of adventure from the original 1870 story and 1950’s movie.



There’s no real word on why Disney has halted 20,000 Leagues, nor why McG has left the project (the latter is probably because he doesn’t wanna’ wait around for Disney to put it back on track). With regards to McG, as stated he’ll move on to concentrate on Dead Spy Running (written by Syriana scribe, Stephen Gaghan), and he’s still attached to Terminator 5. However, the fifth Terminator movie is currently in limbo as the franchise works its way through the courts.

The closest the 20,000 Leagues project had to casting was Will Smith being eyed as one of the two leads (which was really just McG wanting him to star), but apart from that no cast was set, so small disappointment there…

As for Disney, it certainly isn’t short of big-budget adventure films to fill our movie screens with: on top of Pirates of the Caribbean 4: On Stranger Tides (which is clearly a priority), they also have John Carter of Mars and the quite highly-anticipated Tron Legacy. So it’s not like they NEED 20,000 Leagues to tide them over. Nonetheless, I think it’s a shame the film isn’t moving forward (at least for now); even with McG at the helm I was still looking forward to what Disney would deliver with such a great story to work off of.

Are you surprised Disney has put a halt on their 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea? Are you glad McG isn’t directing anymore? If the project ever does get started up again, who would you like to see direct?

Stay tuned to Screen Rant for any updates to this story.