The Trailer for 'Nautilus' Crafts a Blockbuster Origin Story for Captain Nemo

The adventure series Nautilus has had a long and torturous path to the screen. The series began its life as a Disney+ project, but it was shelved back in 2023 as part of a series of cost-cutting measures. (Its budget was said to have run into the hundreds of millions by this point.) AMC stepped in and snapped it up a few months later. However, thanks to the complex rights acquisition process in our current entertainment environment, the series was acquired by Prime Video in the U.K., where it aired last Fall. It's only now about to finally premiere in America in June, ostensibly because summer and adventure programming used to go together once upon a time.

(We still miss you, Around the World in 80 Days.)

Inspired by Jules Verne's classic novel, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, the series is essentially an origin story for the novel's mysterious Captain Nemo, a scientific visionary who navigates the sea in his submarine, the Nautilus. Embracing Nemo's Indian heritage, as revealed in the sequel, The Mysterious Island, the drama reimagines him as an Indian prince who has been robbed of his birthright and forced to work as an indentured laborer for the East India Mercantile Company. Bent on revenge against those who have taken everything from him, Nemo steals the prototype he's building and sets off on a hunt for treasure and freedom along with a motley crew of fellow prisoners. (Surprise, the sub is the Nautilus, and this show is also the story of how he got his ship.)