McG recently announced that he will be making Terminator 5, but before he does, he'll finish his 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. McG's been working hard on the remake of Disney's first live-action movie — scouting locations all over the world has to be exhausting. Recently, he described the changes he has in store, which includes being more politically correct than the 1954 original.
It's a bit of a departure from the [Richard] Fleischer movie, and much more in keeping with the spirit of the novel, as far as what Aronnax is up to, and the becoming of Nemo, and how the man became at war with war itself. So there's a
little bit more meat on the bone in regard to the genesis of the Nemo character than you're given in the '50s movie that Disney made. And also, it's a little more contemporary, because in that movie, there were... You know, I love that movie, but there were two female characters, they were both prostitutes. And there were a couple of black people in the film, and they were all electrocuted. So nowadays, I think we need to progress a little bit beyond that.
One way of showing that "progress" is casting Will Smith as Nemo, something McG was trying to accomplish in January, though now he claims he's hoping to cast Sam Worthington in the role. Whoever does get cast as Nemo will have to prepare himself for a workout.
It will be a great deal of action, because I mean, let's face it, the guy is an adventurer. And I think that's the intention of [Leagues author Jules] Verne. The idea is getting up and then going around the world, living under sea, doing
what no one does. And it's the spirit of the adventure that I want to capture.
There's no release date yet for Leagues but production is supposed to begin this year.