David Fincher's 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA charts different course from Verne's novel

David Fincher is working with Scott Z. Burns on an adaptation of Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. The project has been floating around for a bit, but not much news has been announced because both Fincher and Burns are working on other projects. Cinemablend had a chance to talk with Burns recently to get an update on the project. 

Burns is also working on a script for The Man From U.N.C.L.E., but there is still a bunch of pre-production work to be done and filming is expect in the spring. Here is what Burns had to say:

"Because of the amount of pre-vis work that David would have to do we wodn’t probably start shooting for a little while later and David is so buried inDragon Tattoo, that’s where his focus is. For now I’ve done writing for both of them [The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea]. They’re sort of waiting to get cast and move forward." Here is what Burns had to say about Leagues being different from the novel:

Burns also confirmed that the scale of the project is "really big," but don't expect the movie to be the exact same story from Verne's novel. Saying that there's "very little" that goes directly from the page to the screen, he said that his job "isn’t to turn a book into a movie, it’s to be inspired by the book and then go write a movie." The inspiration that Burns took largely come from the three main characters: Captain Nemo, French marine biologist Professor Pierre Aronnax, and master harpoonist Ned Land. "David and I had a really cool idea for the relationship between Nemo, and Aronnax and Land," Burns said. "That’s really what we kind of got into. But I think it’s very, very true to the spirit of the book." 

It will be interesting to see how true the final product is to the "spirit" of the novel. I am still interested in seeing a cool underwater eipc. Abyss is one of the last films to fit the mold. What are your thoughts?