It was surprising enough to learn over the weekend that David Fincher, of all people, would be taking over for McG on what had been Disney's doomed attempt to update 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Now prepare yourself for the next surprise-- Fox is hard at work on a competitor, and not just a knockoff, but their own adaptation of the exact same material.

THR reports they've brought on Ridley and Tony Scott as producers for the project, which was written by Travis Beacham, one of the guys behind Clash of the Titans. They also want Wanted director Timur Bekmambetov to handle the whole thing, though he's not confirmed yet. The project has apparently been in the works since the end of the 2008 writer's strike, and with Beacham's script finished and Fincher's chosen writer Scott Z. Burns just beginning over at Disney, Fox is already ahead of the game. The original Jules Verne novel is in the public domain, so really, you could start working on your own adaptation right now if you wanted to.

The Fox take on the story will set the classic tale in the future, likely making it more sci-fi than what I would expect to be a classic adventure over at Disney. Really, the only way these two movies can continue going on simultaneously is for them to be markedly different from one another-- moviegoers can definitely handle seeing the same kind of movie over and over again in a short period of time, but we need at least a few differences so we don't feel like we're being openly insulted. It's time for Disney and Fox to pull out just enough finesse to get us to accept these two identical projects.