McG's 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA sinks!!!

By Matt Holmes / June 25, 2011

The exit of Disney chairman Dick Cook two months ago had left McG's ambitious re-telling of the Jules Verne classic tale 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea in dangerous, stormy waters and it's now hit an iceberg, and it's sinking according to Variety. McG was set to steer the ship in February but Cook, who had previously championed Bill Marsilli's (Deja Vu) origin script based around Nemo constructed his warship, the Nautilus, lost it's trust at Disney once he departed. New chairman Rich Ross didn't like the idea of an McG re-telling and he abandoned ship before it got any further.

McG chased Will Smith to play Nemo at the turn of the year and when he said no, he turned to The Rock who was likely to star in the picture when filming was to begin in February. If Ross is smart, he will know that there's big money to be made in a 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea tentpole someday, if they find the right writer/director partnership. McG was never the right man for this but a Jon Turtletaub, a Gore Verbinski or even a Stephen Sommers comes on board, and you have a ready made tentpole that could easily become a franchise. McG's career has hit a bit of a limbo this year. Terminator Salvation didn't go down so well and with the franchise sale that's happening right now, his follow-up has been indefinitely cancelled and he's out of work there. He's now lost this Disney re-imaging gig t00. So he probably now has to look further back to a project he came onto over a year ago - the Warner Bros. movie Dead Spy Running, a James Bond/Jason Bourne kind of action thriller about the adventures of a former MI:5 agent. The movie will be based on Jon Stock's June released novel of the same name.