A few months ago, Disney decided to torpedo McG’s plan to make a new version of Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, and it was largely thought that the heroic Captain Nemo and iconic submarine the Nautilus would remain sunk at the bottom of the development ocean. Well, now comes a surprising twist: David Fincher is aiming to raise it back up into production.
It’s a little bit out of leftfield for several reasons. Fincher isn’t exactly the person we’d have guessed would want to tackle a big-budget action studio adventure and you wouldn’t naturally think of the genius behind** Fight Club** and Zodiac as the Mouse House’s first choice for such a film. How things change! Fincher has been stretching himself with ambitious fare like Benjamin Button and is busy finishing up birth-of-Facebook drama T****he Social Network.
The director apparently approached Disney production boss Sean Bailey about making a big tentpole film, and now the studio has put him together with Bourne Ultimatum co-writer Scott Z Burns to figure out a fresh take.
For extra irony, one of the reasons the Disney bosses sunk McG’s $150 million take was that it came off as a little dark. And though very little has been heard about it since that happened, they’ve remained very keen to get it afloat once again.
So now Fincher and Burns will figure out what they want to do with the sea-going scientist and his powerful submersible, with early word from the Heat Vision Blog pointing to a Star Wars/Empire Strikes Back style adventure with a strong visual palette.
Next week: Brett Ratner announces that he’ll make a $250,000 budgeted, one-set version of an obscure Swedish play that chronicles one horse’s struggle with the nature of existence. Well, reality’s got to balance itself out somehow.