Wow, I didn’t see this one coming. According to Variety, Warner Bros. has halted moving forward with their remake of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. On top of that, McG, who was set to direct, is off the project, and will now concentrate on other things such as the Warner Bros. drama, Dead Spy Running.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea seemed to be moving ahead pretty well, with a tentative shooting start of February, 2010. McG even said not that long ago that they’d already looked at different shooting locations including Japan, France and Canada. The Terminator Salvation director sounded pretty enthusiastic back in August when he talked about such things as how he was planning on contemporizing the story while still maintaining the spirit of adventure from the original 1870 story and 1950’s movie.

Hollywood’s newest favorite Aussie actor Sam Worthington has a lot on his plate coming up. In addition to being the lead in James Cameron’s long-awaited special-effects extravaganza, Avatar, Worthington will be playing Perseus in the upcoming remake of Clash of the Titans and is rumored for the part of Captain Nemo in Disney’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Wow, I’m just writing about these films and I’m tired.

Anyway, Steve Weintraub at Collider had the chance to sit down with Worthington on the set of Clash of the Titans to talk about some of his upcoming projects and his thoughts on his most recent big-budget film, Terminator: Salvation. Check out some portions of the interview below. For the full interview, make sure to head over to Collider.

Two film directing projects on the horizon for McG (Terminator Salvation) is the Disney remake of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and the fifth installment in the Terminator franchise, currently being referred to as simply Terminator 5. It appears that McG’s focus is currently on 20,000 Leagues, with T5 to follow after that. Thanks to IESB and Collider, we have an update on both high-profile projects.

The script for the upcoming McG directed 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea remake was originally written by Bill Marsilii (Deja Vu) and Justin Marks (Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li). But today we learn from The Hollywood Reporter that Oscar-nominated screenwriter Randall Wallace (Braveheart, Pearl Harbor), has been brought on to rewrite Disney’s update of the classic Jules Verne tale.

Man, a lot of things came to light during director McG’s Terminator Salvation panel in NYC this past week. Besides silencing skeptics and seriously amping up the buzz-o-meter for Salvation, McG informed our good friends over at Latino Review about his plan for the upcoming remake of Disney’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

And, to everyone’s surprise, McG had this say: he wants Will Smith to star in the film.

2008 seems to have been the year of career for director McG. Despite a ton of fanboy hateration, the Charlie’s Angels director managed deliver what looks to be a kick-ass addition to the Terminator franchise, Terminator Salvation. Now, with five months yet to go before Salvation hits theaters,word comes that McG is being handed another big-budget project to helm: Disney’s remake of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

Sam Raimi doesn’t have to work on anything at all if he doesn’t want to, but his options are wide open. Following the success of his Spider-Man films the red carpet now belongs to him. He’s kicking back and pondering quite a few projects right now, including the possibility of Spider-Man 4. From the sound of it, he (and Marvel and the studio) realize that they need to do something very different with the next Spider-Man film considering the reaction of moviegoers to the weirdness that was Spider-Man 3.

Regarding Spidey, Raimi stated:

“Right now, Sony is meeting with different writers to try and bring a fresh, new story and approach to the ‘Spider-Man’ franchise, different writers have been coming in and spinning different tales of where ‘Spider-Man’ could go from here… A lot of people are working very hard to work on a really good story right now.”