David Fincher on the failure of ‘Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea’

Many potential projects have fallen through for David Fincher, from his version of Aaron Sorkin’s “Steve Jobs” with Christian Bale to his Tom Cruise-directed miniseries “Black Dahlia.” But one failed vision that people clamored for, perhaps above all others, was his adaptation of Jules Verne’s “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.”

Previously made by Disney in a beloved 1954 film starring James Mason and Kirk Douglas and in 1997 for an ABC miniseries starring Michael Caine and Patrick Dempsey, the story follows a group of scientists and whalers sent on the high seas to take down a huge sea creature that was attacking ships. They soon discover that the creature is not a monster at all, but a submarine designed by the emotionally damaged Captain Nemo.

Fincher intended to work with Disney, which still owns the intellectual property, and screenwriter Scott Z. Burns to create a newer, more modern version in the early 2010s, but ran into problems after the death of the desired lead , Brad Pitt (who would have played harpooneer Ned Land). on the scenario. Disney wanted Fincher to cast Chris Hemsworth, fresh off his starring roles in “Thor” and “The Avengers,” but Fincher wanted Channing Tatum. In a recent interview with Letterboxd, Fincher also pointed out that he couldn’t be on the same page as Disney when it came to the story they were trying to tell.

“You can’t get people excited about the risks you’re excited about,” Fincher said. “Disney was in a situation where they were saying, ‘We need to know that there’s one thing that we know how to operate from nose to tail, and you’re going to have to check those boxes for us.’ And I said to myself: ‘You’ve read Jules Verne, haven’t you?’

In the original novel and its sequel, it is revealed that Captain Nemo is actually a member of royalty who participated in the real Indian Rebellion of 1857, an act which led to the death of his family and his flight to the seas. Fincher wanted to center these details and make it a serious film, but Disney didn’t want it to distract from the fun, action/adventure piece they were hoping to produce.

“It’s a story about an Indian prince who has real problems with white imperialism, and that’s what we want to do,” Fincher told Disney. “And they were like, ‘Yeah, yeah, great. As long as there is a lot less than that inside. So you get to a point where you say, “Look, I can’t fake this, and I don’t want you to find out at the first time what you financed. It doesn’t make any sense because it’s just going to pull teeth for the next two years. And I don’t want to do that. I mean, life is too short.

The “Fight Club” director also described the vibe of his rendition as “really kind of gross, cool, humid and steampunk,” and while he wasn’t able to complete that project, he was able to tap into those elements for his Netflix episode. “Love, Death and Robots,” titled “Bad Traveling.” He was also able to overcome the difficulty of abandoning the project fairly quickly, as it’s something he’s had to do many times at this point in his career and still has to do.

“Movies flop for a reason, and I try to stay extremely neutral about it,” Fincher told Letterboxd. “I learned very early in my career from a great friend – and a lovely, talented man – named Joel Schumacher, that you can’t want something more than the people who are going to finance it because then they got you. You want to keep your head out of the fray.