In my continued wait for upcoming Star Trek shows, I was thrilled to see the 2025 TV schedule would feature a new adventure series from former Discovery actor Shazad Latif to tide me over. I had a chance to watch and enjoy the episodes ahead of the AMC premiere, and had to ask Shazad Latif about just how much of Captain Nemo's journey in Nautilus was filmed on a set.
Nautilus, an adaptation of Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, goes out into the open ocean, under the sea, and to many exotic locations during its ten-episode run. Viewers watching will be in awe of some of the visuals, and maybe forget they're not filming in an actual submarine traveling the ocean. I know I was, so I asked Latif in our recent interview if they were shooting scenes in an ocean, and learned the real scoop behind it all:
So there's obviously loads of CGI there in the exterior, like if you're in the tank. I think it's the biggest [water] tank in the Southern Hemisphere or something, it's on the Warner Bros lot down at the Gold Coast. When the sub’s above water, you're swimming in the sea, you're in that tank, so that's real water. And obviously we did lots of locations where, like, say you're coming up to the shore or something like that. Then, underwater stuff would be CGI, but you could still film underwater. They would have to sort of give a layer of CGI, even if you'd filmed in that tank anyway. But a lot of it was real, even the underwater stuff was real, actually.
So, in short, they were never filming in the ocean, but there was plenty of actual water utilized to make Nautilus. I had a hunch looking at some of the breaching scenes in the upcoming AMC series, which just looked far too convincing to be anything else than actors swimming around in actual water. That said, the ocean seemed too choppy and unpredictable for filming, so it makes sense they used a massive water tank in the Gold Coast for filming.
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Shazad Latif was top of the call sheet for Nautilus, after Star Trek: Section 31 was repurposed to be a movie centered around Michelle Yeoh's Georgiou. While Nautilus will be new to an American audience, it aired overseas in Europe last year and received solid praise during its run.
As someone who had a chance to watch the series in advance, it's no surprise to me that this show was originally slated to be available for those with a Disney+ subscription. I picked up some strong Indiana Jones vibes while watching, and I also feel like Pirates of the Caribbean was an influence as well with all the island and sea adventures. Of course, the iconic Jules Verne novel it's adapted from precedes both of those, but there's some clear work put in to modernize the tale in an interesting way for audiences.
Tune in to see Nautilus on AMC beginning on Sunday, June 29th at 9:00 p.m. ET. The two-episode premiere will give audiences an idea of what to expect throughout the rest of the show, and I think people will be satisfied with this latest adventure based on a classic book that proves these stories still hold up to this day.
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