James Mangold’s hotly-anticipated and indeed R-rated Wolverine sequel has been making waves of late, though Deadline reports that Mangold will really be hitting the high seas further down the line with Disney’s long-gestating maritime adventure, Captain Nemo.
Pitched as an origins tale to H.G. Wells’ 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, the reboot is currently situated in pre-production where Sebastian Gutierrez (Hotel Noir, The Eye) is busy whipping a script into shape. As one of the studio’s first live-action feature films, Leagues holds a tremendous amount of historical value for the House of Mouse. Originally released in 1954, Captain Nemo was the core anti-hero of the swashbuckling epic, and Disney is now hoping to weave a feature film out of Jules Verne’s story – one centering on the captain as he creates the Nautilus warship.
Not to be confused with Bryan Singer’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, it’s likely that Captain Nemo will be placed on Mangold’s back-burner as he begins to fire up production on The Wolverine 3. Tentatively pegged for a release in March of 2017, the Hugh Jackman-fronted actioner is primed to bring the curtain down on the actor’s defining stint as the enraged mutant.
Remaining in the mutant universe for the time being, and Singer has labelled Fox’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea as his next feature beyond May’s X-Men: Apocalypse. It’ll feature a script from Rick Sordelet and Dan Studney and is, without doubt, much further along than Disney’s newly hatched Captain Nemo, with plans in place for Singer to shoot in the fall of 2016.
