It’s disappointing that Disney is hiring an utter hack like McG to direct “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Captain Nemo,” which sure sounds like the first installment in a threatened franchise based on Jules Verne’s novel. (I’d suggest Russell Crowe to take James Mason’s old role). It’s also annoying that Variety’s Michael Fleming, who ought to know better, repeats the common misconception that Richard Fleischer’ classic 1954 original was “the first live-action film made by Walt Disney.” Leaving aside features that combined live-action and animation (beginning with 1941’s “The Reluctant Dragon” and including the notorious “The Song of the South”), Disney’s first entirely live-action feature was “The Adventures of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men” (1952). This was the first of three features Disney shot in the U.K., using box-office grosses frozen under English law that his then U.S. distributor, RKO, couldn’t take out of the country. The others, which preceded the Hollywood-shot “20,000 Leagues,” were “The Sword and the Rose” and “Rob Roy, the Highland Rogue” (both 1953). Getting back to “20,000 Leagues,” back in 2004 Fox commissioned a script (from Justin Haythe of “Revolutionary Road”) for a remake of its 1961 knockoff, “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea,” in which Walter Pidgeon played a meglomanical admiral clearly inspired by Nemo.