A big budget series filmed in Queensland which employed hundreds of Australian cast and crew has become the latest victim of cuts at Disney, being dropped by the studio after filming – and before it even had a chance to be released.
Nautilus, a UK series that had been set to stream on Disney+, is a prequel story to Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Shazad Latif stars as Captain Nemo, an Indian prince who became a prisoner of the East India Company and sets off on a mission of revenge on submarine Nautilus.
The series was in production for most of 2022 on the Gold Coast, where it took up half the soundstages at Village Roadshow Studios to house the replica submarine. The cast also included Australian actors Georgia Flood, Pacharo Mzembe, Benedict Hardie and Darren Gilshenan, as well as international talent Cameron Cuffe and Thierry Fremont.
When Nautilus was announced in 2021, the Queensland government touted the production would inject $96m into the local economy and create 240 positions for crew and 350 jobs for background actors. At the time, Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk flagged the prospect of multiple seasons to be filmed in the state. Screen Queensland declined to reveal the value of government incentives the production received, citing commercial in confidence.
Speaking to the Guardian earlier this year, Matthew Deaner of Screen Producers Australia said that state and federal location incentives to lure Hollywood productions to film in Australia were affecting local productions, which often didn’t fit the criteria for incentives, and were now competing with major US studios for studio spaces and crew. “To solve this we must lift the domestic sector and provide local productions greater resources to allow them to properly compete,” he said at the time.
According to American trade website Deadline, Nautilus was dropped as part of cost-cutting at the Hollywood studio, which plans to trim $US3bn from its non-sports programming, which includes taking between $US1.5bn to $US1.8bn in tax writedown. In these circumstances, cancelling a series or movie – or removing it from streaming – reduces its value on Disney’s books, which decreases the company’s tax burden.
Nautilus’s axing comes at the same time as a similar fate for The Spiderwick Chronicles, a series filmed in Vancouver, Canada which was also culled from Disney+’s upcoming slate despite having completed filming. Both Nautilus and The Spiderwick Chronicles are now being shopped around to other platforms, according to Deadline.
These cuts follow months of upheaval in the entertainment industry, which is going through a period of contraction after years of aggressive growth and high budgets. Wall Street investors have heaped pressure on studios and entertainment companies to be more profitable, even as the actors and writers unions continue to strike for better conditions and pay, transparency around viewership, and protections against AI use.
Last year, Warner Bros Discovery announced it would permanently shelve the $US80m movie adaptation of Batgirl, despite the fact it had already wrapped. It was financially more lucrative to not release the title and claim a tax writedown on the cost of production than to invest more money in reshoots, marketing and royalty payments.
These decisions can be devastating to those working on the productions. “There’s an immense number of individuals who put in the work, the artists and artisans that create a show or movie,” a person working on a recently shelved project told the Guardian. “You might think of the lead actors or the writers as the figureheads of the show, but there’s a lot of heart from a lot of people. It stings when it suddenly goes up in smoke.”
“We creative people know it’s a money game, but you do dare to dream sometimes … It’s a kick in the guts when you realise if the numbers don’t add up, it is all over,” they said.
“I’m seeing a greater trend of bottom-line decision making from very large corporations, and when you have a big production, it’s a bigger target.”
Earlier this year, Disney began to remove a number of its original movies and TV, to claim a tax writedown of their value. These included recent releases such as The Mighty Ducks sequel series, a John Stamos show called Big Shot, the Willow follow-up and the movie adaptation of Artemis Fowl.
Warner Bros Discovery has also begun removing shows from streaming to writedown their value, including Made for Love, Love Life, Westworld and The Nevers among many others, and reversed a season two renewal for Minx. Paramount+ recently scorched the Grease prequel series The Pink Ladies mere weeks after it streamed its final episode.
Guardian Australia understands post-production on Nautilus will continue and the filmmakers are confident the series will find a new screening partner.
