Here’s a good sign that Disney’s McG-directed reboot of Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea is heading in the right direction: a new writer has already been brought on board.
Randall Wallace, the writer of Braveheart (good), We Were Soldiers (bad) and **Pearl Harbor **(oh God), has replaced the original scribes, Bill Marsilii and Justin Marks, on the big-budget action-adventure Captain Nemo: 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea.
Nemo, of course, is the shadowy anti-hero who captains the massive submarine, the Nautilus, and drives two of Verne’s books, 20,000 Leagues… and its sequel, The Mysterious Island, in which he is revealed to be an Indian prince. It’s not yet known if Wallace and Disney will retain Nemo’s Indian heritage for the new movie, but we’re not overly optimistic.
Whatever his take on the material, Wallace had better get a move on. He starts filming on his next directorial project, Secretariat, in late September, and needs to finish Captain Nemo: 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea before then. If he doesn’t, it raises the thrilling prospect of the movie being the first blockbuster in history to finish mid-sentence.