As if it wasn’t ruthless enough for Disney to cancel its own originals and erase them from existence months – or in some cases weeks – after they’d premiered on streaming, the platform also ditched two big budget fantasy adaptations that had already finished shooting, but Nautilus has finally found a new home.
The Spiderwick Chronicles pitched up at Roku following the Mouse House’s call to cast it out into the ether, but the wait for the Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea prequel starring Star Trek: Discovery‘s Shazad Latif faced an even lengthier wait. Principal photography wrapped at the turn of the year, it was tossed onto Disney’s discard pile in August, but only now has it been picked up by AMC.
It’s hardly a small show, either, with the Queensland government reporting that Nautilus would inject $96 million into the local economy, creating 240 positions for crew members and 350 jobs for background actors in the process, so this thing is going to be epic. While a specific date has yet to be revealed, AMC has confirmed a 2024 debut, which has at last allowed everyone involved to breathe a sigh of relief.
Curiously, Disney is continuing to plow ahead on its reboot of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which also features Jules Verne’s Captain Nemo as a key character. Nautilus is obviously much further along given that it’s about as close to completion as it gets, bar the minor setback of scrambling around to find somewhere willing to air it after Disney unceremoniously pulled the plug.