20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1997 Village Roadshow film) 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1997 Village Roadshow film) 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is a 1997 two-part television miniseries produced by Village Roadshow Pictures, based on the novel "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" by Jules Verne. It was written by Brian Nelson and directed by Rod Hardy. The "Nautilus" has been sinking and damaging ships and is at first thought to be a giant narwhal. Pierre Aronnax and Ned Land and Cabe Attucks fall off the USS "Abraham Lincoln" and are picked up by the "Nautilus". Pierre Aronnax's father Thierry Aronnax is with the US naval party. Nemo
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea seas and charted all oceans. Verne would have known of Matthew Maury's international fame and perhaps Maury's French ancestry. References are made to other such Frenchmen as Jean-François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse, a famous explorer who was lost while circumnavigating the globe; Dumont D'Urville, the explorer who found the remains of Lapérouse's ship; and Ferdinand Lesseps, builder of the Suez Canal and the nephew of the sole survivor of Lapérouse's expedition. The "Nautilus" seems to follow the footsteps of these men: she visits the waters where Lapérouse was lost; she sails to Antarctic waters and becomes stranded there, just