At one point, Peta Wilson does a humourous impersonation of Sir Sean Connery's voice. According to Wilson, this was a last-minute addition to the scene, and she felt nervous doing it, since Connery impersonations were considered a no-no on the set. Before the shoot, she called Connery and offered not to do the accent, but he insisted she should. Afterwards, she asked him what he thought. He replied, "You were great!" She was taken aback and asked if he really meant it. He said, "Yeah, it's terrible! It's the worst impersonation I have ever heard, and it's perfect."
A planned sequel was canceled due to negative critical reception and poor box-office receipts. It would have been an adaptation of the second series of the comic book, with the League battling the Martian Tripods from H.G. Wells' "The War of the Worlds." A clue to the sequel's plot can be gleaned from a poster in the background, which says, "Volcanic eruptions on Mars."
Sir Sean Connery had a particularly bad working relationship with director Stephen Norrington. Both disagreed over almost everything, with Norrington constantly changing set-ups during the shoot, much to Connery's annoyance. According to anonymous sources on the set, there were frequent shouting matches, and in one infamous incident, Norrington challenged Connery to hit him in the face, to which Connery responded by walking off the set. Norrington did not attend the opening party, and when Connery was asked where Stephen could be, he is said to have replied, "Check the local asylum."
Except for Rodney Skinner (an Invisible Man), all of the main characters have fallen into the public domain, which means that anybody can write about them. The same rule applies to some Golden Age comic book characters.
Captain Nemo denounces the kidnapping of the scientists' wives and children as "monstrous". In Jules Verne's original story, Nemo's own wife and child were kidnapped and murdered. Grief-stricken, Nemo built his submarine and retreated into the sea.