20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954 film) 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954 film) 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is a 1954 American Technicolor adventure film and the first science fiction film shot in CinemaScope. The film was personally produced by Walt Disney through Walt Disney Productions, directed by Richard Fleischer, and stars Kirk Douglas, James Mason, Paul Lukas and Peter Lorre. It was also the first feature-length Disney film to be distributed by Buena Vista Distribution. The film is adapted from Jules Verne's 19th-century novel "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea". It is considered an early precursor of the steampunk genre. The film was a critical
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea an extensive bibliography, appendices and a wide-ranging introduction studying the novel from a literary perspective. In particular, his original research on the two manuscripts studies the radical changes to the plot and to the character of Nemo forced on Verne by the first publisher, Jules Hetzel. The national origin of Captain Nemo was changed in most movie realizations; in nearly all picture-based works following the book Nemo was made into a European. However, he was represented as an Indian by Omar Sharif in the 1973 European miniseries "The Mysterious Island". Nemo is also depicted as Indian in a silent film