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Director Timur Bekmambetov gave Empire a status update on all of his projects in development including the 20,000 Leagues movie. "Yes, it is happening," the filmmaker said. "We are in development with a writer and Ridley Scott's people. It's early in development. I would like to direct myself – it's a great tale that I love from my childhood. It will be a modernised version of the famous book."

Disney's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea remake is getting another shot at becoming a real movie with the interest of director David Fincher. The helmer of Seven, Fight Club, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Alien³, Fincher approached new Disney head of production Sean Bailey about the project and his idea to make it a "four-quadrant tentpole movie" according to The Hollywood Reporter. The two quietly began to develop the movie under the radar of the trades, soliciting screenwriter Scott Z. Burns (The Bourne Ultimatum) to begin working on a new storyline.

The Reporter heard that Fincher/Burns' new take on the Captain Nemo film is said to be in the same vein as Star Wars.

McG is no longer attached to helm Disney's new 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea film. Furthermore, the studio has shelved plans to produce the movie, at least for the immediate future. Prior to the drydock the studio was anticipating that the movie would start filming in February 2010.

Braveheart screenwriter/We Were Soldiers director Randall Wallace will perform a quick script rewrite on Disney's Captain Nemo screenplay before he goes off to direct Secretariat.

Today 20,000 Leagues director McG shot down Production Weekly's report that Dwayne Johnson had been cast in his movie. "He's not. I don't know where that came from. I've never spoken to Dwayne Johnson," McG said to Sci Fi Wire. McG added that the only actor that has been offered a role in the picture is still Will Smith.

With some egg on their face, Production Weekly later retracted their casting report from yesterday as well as issued a different story synopsis for the movie. No explanation for either change was forthcoming from PW.

The latest issue of Production Weekly is listing Dwayne Johnson (Race to Witch Mountain, Doom) as the first cast member in the new 20,000 Leagues film. No further casting information is supplied but the publication does add this synopsis of the film's story: "A fugitive whaler teams up with a naturalist, a mysterious woman and a captain of a futuristic submarine, to search for a lost underwater civilization that holds libraries of vast knowledge and a weapon with the power to destroy mankind."

A report on CineFools cites a source that claims the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea movie is looking to start filming in Australia close to the end of 2009.

Screenwriter Justin Marks has been called in to perform a rewrite on the script. Marks has a movie out later this month, Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, and has turned in drafts for a proposed new live-action He-Man movie (titled Greyskull), a Voltron movie and the Green Arrow movie Supermax.

Well that didn't take too long: IESB has published their review of Bill Marsilli's second draft of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Captain Nemo. It's dated May 24, 2008. Does Marsilli's script hold water or sink to the bottom of the brine? Read this portion of IESB's review and see if you can gauge their evaluation of it:

"Jules Verne is spinning in his grave -- but not with all the colorful fish floating around him!"

IESB gives the script a negative assessment citing too many montages, too many cute and not funny-for-the-right-reason moments, and action scenes that don't make sense. Still, we get an idea as to when the movie is set (1850), who the bad guys fighting Nemo are (the British Navy, specifically an ambitious right-hand man named Bonneville) and how Nemo constructed his atomic-powered submarine, the Nautilus.

Read the full script review to learn all of the secrets.

Latino Review got our first nice scoop for this project since it was announced last week. At a swank presentation to promote the upcoming Terminator Salvation movie, director McG was asked why he wanted to do a film about Captain Nemo. "The character Nemo in this film is more about obsession, he is obsessed and people tend to forget that when you become so obsessed you end up being the villain," the filmmaker explained.

And then comes the hum-dinger as McG explained who he wants to play the Captain. "Man, I'm trying to get Will Smith to do it, been trying to get a hold of him. I've been wanting to work with him for a long time already. That guy's great!"

Terminator Salvation director McG is attached to direct 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Captain Nemo for Walt Disney Pictures. This new film project has its story set before the events depicited in Disney's first live action picture starring Kirk Douglas and James Mason and released in 1954.

Captain Nemo is a prequel that will show us how the seafarer came to construct the Nautilus, his revolutionary submarine, and then became a dangerous threat to the ships of the world's navies. While the characters and setting come from Jules Verne's novel, the original prequel screenplay was written by Bill Marselli. Sean Bailey (Gone Baby Gone, The Core) will produce the picture.

After wrapping up work on T4, McG may move on to a fifth Terminator or make Nemo his next job assignment. If he does take the gig at Disney he'll have a big paycheck to cash: Variety mentions that McG's deal guarantees him $8 million dollars upfront against 7% of the film's gross. [Full story]