Once upon a time, Disney had planned to launch a series called Nautilus, an origin story of 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea’s Captain Nemo on Disney+. Those plans were canned earlier in 2023, and the series has now found a new home at AMC and AMC+.
Nautilus was originally announced in 2021 as a ten-part series, loosely based on Jules Verne’s classic adventure novel. Created and written by James Dormer (Medici, Devils), the series delves into the background of the enigmatic Captain Nemo, who is described as “an Indian Prince robbed of his birthright and family, a prisoner of the East India Mercantile Company and a man bent on revenge against the forces that have taken everything from him.”
However, Disney wrote the series down in August of 2023 and removed it from its schedule, after filming had been completed. Cue AMC now swooping in to save the production, slotting it into the network’s 2024 schedule as a “special television event,” according to AMC’s executive vice president of original programming, Ben Davis. And it seems like the network is setting things in motion to make Nautilus one of its flagship programs of 2024, with Davis calling it “a big, sweeping drama that is sure to appeal to fans of our Anne Rice Immortal Universe and other buzzy and fan-forward series like Orphan Black: Echoes.”
Star Trek: Discovery alumnus Shazad Latif heads the project as Captain Nemo. He’s joined by Australian actress Georgia Flood as Humility Lucas and French actor Thierry Frémont of Das Boot fame as Gustave Benoit.
There’s currently no firm release date for Nautilus beyond that vague 2024 window, but it will air on AMC and stream on AMC+.
