Nautilus: Behind the Scenes of the Almost Sunken Adaptation of Jules Verne’s ‘Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea’

When TV writer James Dormer began work on Nautilus, an ambitious streaming series drawing from Jules Vernes’ “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,” his 14-year-old son asked his dad one thing.

“I got a lecture from him and he said, ‘Don’t do something like that where the character is about to die, you’re telling them a big story right before they die,’” said Dormer from the Nautilus set in Queensland.

Not every character will survive the show’s 10 episodes, but Dormer always remembered that his children were part of the reason he became involved with Nautilus, whose hero was Captain Nemo, the mysterious sailor from Verne’s stories.

Nemo may be an iconic literary character, but his name translates to “nobody,” which brings to mind his enigmatic nature. Who was this man who steered the crew of this wonderful submarine that should not have existed at all?

There were hints of a plot in “Twenty Thousand Leagues” – a dead wife and children, a desire in his heart for revenge against the Imperial forces – but his past was not revealed until Verne’s sequel to the novel, “The Mysterious Island”.

Nemo was born an Indian prince who lost everything, including his family, to the British East India Company. It was just a line in a book, but Nautilus, named after the submarine, picked it up and started using it.

Telling the story from Nemo’s perspective was important to Dormer. “You’re always looking for something personal, and my children are half Bangladeshi, so I thought I could tell a story that might mean something to them,” he said.

To portray the character, Nautilus cast British actor Shazad Latif, who is of Pakistani descent. Latif liked the 1954 Disney film starring James Mason, but said, “Now it’s time to tackle it from the point of view of someone who looks like me. I think it’s exciting and will only add to the enjoyment, especially for young people.” .

Dormer and Latif sat around a table on the deck of the Nautilus set’s observation well. Behind him is a window overlooking a blue screen, but after adding visual effects, at one point a giant squid swims past him.

The observation port is part of an elaborately constructed submarine and, unusually, connects in one long spine to other interiors, including a three-story engine room where industrial-era pistons actually moved up and down.

Emphasis was placed on practical effects to ensure that Nautilus had texture and solidity despite its fantastic source material.

To recreate the Nautilus in an aesthetic that combined steampunk and colonial grandeur, the production had to build it on two sound stages – it just couldn’t fit in one. On one stage, most of the interiors were included in one go, and a team of set designers filled the spaces with small details.

This is, of course, movie magic. If you pick up one of the leather-bound books littering the background, you may find that its pages contain writings on 20th-century Soviet politics that are not entirely authentic to the 19th-century setting of the Nautilus, unless they somehow coincided with the times Verne… travel stories.

The next scene showed the exterior of a submarine that looked more like a mythical sea beast than a sleek, modern military submarine.

Nautilus took on several sound stages at the Village Roadshow studios on the Gold Coast, where it shot the film for 10 months in 2022. Their neighbors at the time were Godzilla x Kong, which had artificial palm trees lined up outside the doors.

The show featured a huge water tank, so large that the hair and makeup artists had to be ferried by boat to the actors, while the director sat on his own pontoon. Crews who worked on Aquaman, who were already experts in dry filming, helped develop the series’ underwater scenes.

Nautilus was one of, if not the most expensive television series to be made on Australian soil, costing $300 million. Technically it may have been British made, but it was a huge boon to the local industry.

So it was especially shocking when in August 2023, a few months after the end of filming and the start of post-production of the series, Disney, which had ordered the series on its streaming platform, abandoned the project.

Nautilus fell victim to the vagaries of tortuous corporate accounting strategies. At the time, it was one of many titles, series and films produced by multiple studios that were blocked so that the parent company could deduct its tax value.

This happened with as-yet-unreleased projects like Nautilus, Batgirl, and The Spiderwick Chronicles, but it also happened to existing series like The Nevers and Big Shot, which were removed from streaming platforms to go nowhere.

There was a risk that mass production that had been produced in Australia would never be seen because of the line on the profit and loss account.

American cable channel AMC soon became the savior, purchasing the rights for the United States and Canada. However, it took almost a year to decide the fate of the two countries that had invested the most. In August, Amazon announced it had acquired the rights to Prime Video in the UK and Ireland, and a month later local streamer Stan bought them for Australia.

Nearly two years after someone shouted “it’s over” on set in Queensland, Nautilus will be released in Australia next Friday.

When the writer visited the set in November 2022, it was the 190th day of shooting and the mood was positive and optimistic. Executive producer Xavier Marchand said there are plans for multiple seasons, while Dormand stated that “we are well versed in planning for a second season.” Little did they know.

It would be tempting to compare Disney’s corporate machinations with the series’ villain, the British East India Company, but that would be unfair. In truth, the brutality of the real East India Company acting on behalf of the British Crown was terrible: it exploited local resources, enslaved and killed the population.

Nautilus begins with an enslaved Nemo “stealing” a submarine from BEIC, his captors from the Kalpani penal colony modeled after real-life counterparts, along with a crew that happened to be present at the time of his mutiny. They are a diverse group of people who were enslaved by the British.

“We’re telling a story about a really diverse group of characters and we’re talking about colonialism, but we’re doing it from the perspective of the colonized, which I didn’t think was the approach in the book,” series producer Cameron Welsh said.

Dormer said they adapted some of the characters after casting so that they could use their own background and feel more responsible over it: “I know they felt a great sense of responsibility representing various people who had been deceived by the British Empire actor over the years.” .

The characters include a trader from Zanzibar (modern Tanzania), a farmer from Kowloon (Hong Kong), a Maori warrior, a Bengali intellectual, a fisherman from northern India and a 12-year-old boy from the Caribbean.

The production is full of little details that support this storytelling DNA, and not always in obvious ways. If you stop and look closely at the episode where there is a fight scene in some of the archives, you can see boxes of various items that the British looted from all over the world.

Taken from his Imperial captors, this act of defiance by Nemo represents the untold stories of that Imperial era.

Latif said: “We were never told about the rebellions or the little hero. I grew up knowing about South Asian heroes other than Ghandi. But such things happened and there were people who resisted. They are simply not taught in our history curriculum.

The show dives into the injustices of colonial history, reflecting the ongoing discourse of the present, and King Charles’ visit to Australia earlier this week is proof that these wounds will not heal and these disputes will not be resolved.

But it’s also, as executive producer Chris Loveall liked to point out, “first and foremost, a bold action-adventure story.” Nautilus is undoubtedly a brawler.

The series follows a crew trying to discover a mythical treasure while being pursued by the British East India Company, which follows them on the rugged-looking ship Dreadknot. There are also explosions, riots, jumps from balconies, jungle hideouts, deadly shootings and wanderings around Artik.

It is a combination of Verne’s love of discovery and dizzying adventures with the heartbreak of Nemo, who has lost everything except his desire for revenge.

“Who doesn’t like a revenge story?” – Latif asked. “You’re following this guy, he’s escaping from prison, his wife and child were murdered. There’s enough out there already. Add to that the environmental story, the science and the beauty of the setting, and we see whales and eels in every episode.

“It’s just great material that strengthens your emotional core. You’d be weird if you didn’t want to follow this story.

Nautilus will be streamed on Stan from October 25.

The writer traveled to the Gold Coast as a guest of the production.