Both are in early production - neither has been green lit yet, but I have strong hopes. The downsides are that one is Disney and the other is Fox. Then again, both Disney and Fox have done versions of 20,000 Leagues before - while neither was particularly true to the book both were very nice looking, and the Disney one in particular is attached to all sorts of warm and fuzzy memories.

20,000 Leagues was the very first 'grown up' book that I ever read - about a month before starting first grade. (And, boy, wasn't Dick & Jane a letdown! )

Cinema has been generally kind to Captain Nemo and his Nautilus - even the horrible League of Extraordinary Gentleman had a very good Nemo and Nautilus.

I am going to be keeping my eyes and ears open - I want to visit with the Captain, Ned Land, and Prof. Aronnax (sp?) again.

The Auld Grump

I have read (Verne) Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas, A Journey to the Center of the Earth, Mysterious Island, From the Earth to the Moon; (Wells) The First Men In the Moon), The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth, The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Time Machine, and The War of the Worlds and am continually astonished on how much the movie makers over the years have changed the stories. In some cases it is needed to make the changes for strictly commercial reasons, but it still saddens me to find that so many people think the movie is the book.

The standard English translation of 20,000 Leagues under the Sea sucks. The French consider Jules Verne's work as literature, the English as adventure stories. The reason for this is not parochialism by the French, but shoddy translations by the English.

20,000 Leagues under the Sea was translated in 1873 by a English pastor under orders from British censors. His translation, which removed almost a quarter of the original text, altered or removed key sections of the book distoring the meaning of significant parts of the book, misrepresented Nemo, and ruined Verne's informative and well researched science (even things as simple as the distances traveled don't add up in the English version). If you've ever thought some parts of 20,000 Leagues under the Sea are badly written or don't seem to make sense, then you'd be right - but the fault is in the translation, not the original story.

If you want to read the real 20,000 Leagues under the Sea, a better and much more interesting book, I highly recommend the re-translation by Walter James Miller and Frederick Paul Walter ().

On a different note, how is it that, every year or two, several different Hollywood studios go to work simultaneously on different versions of what is essentially the same movie? Is there some creative genius out there who is great at pitching a concept but sucks when it comes to pinning down a contract (by the time they do get a contract with one studio they've already sold several other studios on the general idea)?

I read Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas from a F. P. Walter translation available from Project Gutenberg.



There are a lot of good books in the public domain at that site. I usually read the book from there and then buy it later.

I agree Grump. It's just a shame that the English version everyone reads is such an inferior book compared with a more accurate translation. It is to Verne's credit that his story can be so abused and yet still stand the test of time.

Personally I think that if people re going to read the book, they may as well get both the bones of story and the quality. However, if the direction (and success) of modern communications and entertainment is anything to go by, perhaps that is an outdated point of view.