Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea is reimagined in bold new action-adventure series Nautilus
Deep beneath the fabled Pillars of Halvar lies Viking treasure waiting to be plucked from the abyss. The only thing stopping one enterprising prisoner from liberating it is a vessel that can reach it. Inspired by the enduring science fiction novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by author Jules Verne, Nautilus tells the story of how Captain Nemo came to take the helm of the infamous submarine.
Portrayed by Star Trek: Discovery star Shazad Latif, Nemo is first introduced as a prisoner of the East India Mercantile Company. An Indian prince stripped of his status and ripped from his family, Nemo is forced to work for the company, designing the engines of a secret submersible, the Nautilus.
“The corporation’s more powerful than any country,” Director Crawley (Damien Garvey, The Artful Dodger) declares in the debut episode. “We must maintain dominance. That is why the Nautilus was developed.” Conceived as a weapon to maintain the colonizer’s borders, when the company’s plans change, forcing them to launch the Nautilus earlier than anticipated, Nemo’s rebellion gathers at a moment’s notice to get ahead of them so he can liberate the vessel for his own use.
In an act of revenge against the people who took everything from him, Nemo plots to steal the ship and set off on an adventure to retrieve buried riches. With a hastily assembled crew onboard, Nemo leaves the penal colony in the periscope’s rear-view, but the people running the East India Mercantile Company are not willing to let the Nautilus go without a fight.
Also starring in the 10-part adventure series are Georgia Flood (Apples Never Fall) as hostage-turned-crew member Humility Lucas; Céline Menville (Emily in Paris) as Loti; Thierry Frémont (Das Boot) as Benoit; Richard E. Grant (The Franchise) as White Rajah; Anna Torv (Fringe) as Revna; and Noah Taylor (So Long, Marianne) as Captain Mogg.
It’s nearly impossible to quietly execute a prisoner uprising, and Nemo’s big departure only gives him and his crew a bit of a head start.
“She is mine. I want her back,” Crawley says of the pilfered vessel in the trailer. He is talking to the right guy, Youngblood (Jacob Collins-Levy, Young Wallander), who tells Crawley: “If you’re looking for someone to bring Nemo back in chains, I’m your man.” It’s not hard to find Nemo’s trail, as it seems the charismatic seafarer makes quite an impression on everyone he meets. Described by various characters as a convict, pirate, stubborn, brave and angry, Nemo is on a mission to get to the mythic treasure he’s after, letting the undetectable submarine be the cover that his spirit does not afford him. There is simply too much on the line to worry about anything than being the first to lay eyes on buried riches that might be the only thing to secure everyone’s sovereignty.
Along the way, Nemo and the crew of the Nautilus encounter formidable deep sea creatures and explore the incredible unknown landscape of the ocean floor on the way to their destination of the North East Passage. Chased at sea and on land by those who want either the same fortune they are after or the treasure of the Nautilus, Nemo and the crew must work together to maintain their freedom.
Latif, who will be seen next as Edgar Linton in the buzzy Emerald Fennell-directed adaptation of the timeless Emily Brontë-penned novel Wuthering Heights early next year, spoke to Yahoo! U.K. about portraying a new angle of another well-known character.
“It’s very rare you get the origin story of a character who’s usually in the old film — the James Mason film and all the iterations of it — he’s a mysterious character,” he explained.
“In the book as well, you don’t really know his past, he’s very vague and that’s sort of the thing, but in this we get to explore this very flawed, very complex character who’s on a ship with 10 other brown men, we rarely get shows like that,” Latif continued.
The North American premiere of Nautilus has been on deck for a while. The series was initially ordered and produced as a Disney+ venture, but in August 2023, the streamer dropped the series — which had already been filmed — to cut costs, just one of many projects that were scrapped that year by major entertainment companies. Nautilus was picked up and has aired through other distributors internationally and finally makes its debut on AMC.
Nautilus premieres on Sunday, June 29, on AMC