While Disney is still trying to figure out what to do with their with high seas adventure franchise Pirates of The Caribbean, reportedly set to pivot from Johnny Depp and his character Jack Sparrow. There is something else brewing in the ocean from Disney.

HN Entertainment has learned from a source that the studio’s remake of 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea is back in active development despite some radio silence of late, while it’s currently uncertain if Logan director James Mangold (who took over for David Fincher) is still attached for the Jules Verne adaptation.

In 2016, Deadline reported that Mangold joined the project that would act as an origin story of Captain Nemo with a script from Sebastian Gutierrez. Mangold recently made his racing biopic Ford v. Ferarri and hasn’t announced what his next project would be.

Director James Mangold has boarded Captain Nemo, an origin story based on Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea that has Sebastian Gutierrez (Hotel Noir and The Eye) working on the latest draft. Mangold is prepping the sequel to the Wolverine film he made with Hugh Jackman but will navigate Captain Nemo down the line. Getting a version of this story to the screen is something Disney has wanted to do for a long time, most recently when David Fincher was developing it (including a draft by his Seven scribe Andrew Kevin Walker) before he dropped out to direct Gone Girl.

Could the resurgence of interest have something to do with the recent success of Aquaman? That’s unknown but Disney has been developing the projects for years and it seems like a good time to dust it off.

I previously first revealed that Pirates of The Caribbean 6 was in active development at Disney just before Deadpool screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick joined the project, then recently reportedly exiting the sequel.

In 1866, Professor Pierre M. Aronnax (Paul Lukas) and his assistant Conseil (Peter Lorre), stranded in San Francisco by reports of a giant sea monster attacking ships in the Pacific Ocean, are invited to join an expedition to search for the creature. During the search, they and harpooner Ned Land (Kirk Douglas) are thrown overboard during an attack, eventually discovering that the supposed monster is actually a submarine piloted by the brilliant but haunted Captain Nemo (James Mason).

SOURCE: HN ENTERTAINMENT