McG, who will direct 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Captain Nemo, a reworking of the Jules Verne novel, told SCI FI Wire that he will look to the source material for his story and also reference Verne's other classic SF adventure tales, such as Mysterious Island.

The director added that his version of the Nautilus would definitely be influenced by Harper Goff's design for the iconic submarine, as seen in Disney's 1954 movie. (See the image above, a re-creation of the Nautilus by WikiFred on Wikipedia.org.)

"I'm attracted to the character and the prospect of telling that story in a world with visual effects," McG said in an interview Wednesday in Hollywood after screening footage from his next film, Terminator Salvation. "So you add those two together, it seems like a great idea."

For McG, the film is about obsession. "I love obsession, and Nemo becomes so obsessed with what he's at war with, he becomes guilty of the original infraction," the director said. "And I just love that, you know? A guy who's at war with war, but then he becomes so maniacal about it, is he not indeed part of the problem?"

As for the look of the Nautilus, McG said he would go back to Goff's design. "We just got done talking about that," he said, adding: "Absolutely. And just the beauty of the design, you hold it on a vertical axis, it indeed is a recoiled squid. You know, there's so much going on, so much intelligence. Of course, the ribbing and the lenses, yeah, yeah, yeah. It'll be the equivalent of what you saw in Batman with Adam West and what you see with Christian Bale. Certainly that's a batsuit, certainly it's been updated."

It's expected that McG will tackle Captain Nemo as his next film.