Watch the original 1961 trailer on YouTube: Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961) trailer
Irwin Allen’s atomic submarine is blowing its ballast tanks once more. Paramount+ has ordered an eight-episode reimagining of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, according to Variety, with Daisy Ridley starring and executive producing, Akiva Goldsman writing and Matt Shakman (WandaVision, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters) directing. Deadline reports that a writers’ room is already under way, which in streaming terms means the hatches are shut but nobody has yet pressed the big red dive button.
Ridley plays Lee Crane, the name David Hedison wore for four seasons, though the commander has been retrained as a brilliant ocean scientist. She is dragged into a classified government programme after a catastrophic Arctic expedition kills her twin sister. At its heart sits the USS Seaview, no longer the pride of the Nelson Institute of Marine Research but a retro-futuristic submarine found entombed in the ice, covered in symbols from a history that shouldn’t exist. It powers up only when Lee steps aboard. From there, she takes command of an uneasy crew while trying to contain mysterious forces and uncover erased human history, Atlantis included.
So, a chosen-one submarine. Rey found a lightsaber that called to her from a box in Maz Kanata’s cellar; Lee Crane gets a nuclear sub that refuses to start for anyone else. Ridley appears to have a type, and we can hardly blame her.
The original began life as Allen’s 1961 film, with Walter Pidgeon, Peter Lorre and Barbara Eden saving the world from a burning Van Allen belt, before ABC turned it into a series that ran from 1964 to 1968 across 110 episodes. Richard Basehart’s Admiral Nelson spent the early black-and-white years outfoxing hostile foreign powers in perfectly respectable Cold War thrillers. By the end, the Seaview had become a floating haunted house in which werewolves, mummies, fossil men, a lobster man, an evil leprechaun and Vincent Price’s murderous puppets all took their turn stalking the corridors. Harlan Ellison wrote one episode under his Cordwainer Bird pseudonym, which tells you roughly how he felt about the finished product. The cast also perfected the art of hurling themselves sideways across a stationary set whenever something thumped the hull, a technique still fondly known as the Seaview rock and roll.
Goldsman is an interesting choice to take the helm. He has an Oscar for A Beautiful Mind and helped bring Star Trek: Strange New Worlds into the world, which buys a great deal of goodwill. He also co-developed Picard and wrote Batman & Robin, which spends some of it. Legendary first tried to refloat the property back in 2020, and in February 2025 Goldsman and Legendary Television announced plans to reimagine three Allen shows: this one, The Time Tunnel and Land of the Giants. Netflix has already had its go at Lost in Space, so if the Seaview stays watertight, expect the full Irwin Allen expanded universe to follow it down, presumably with someone gazing meaningfully into a spinning tunnel of lights.
Variety notes that the series was in development for months before the Warner Bros and Paramount merger closed, so it has at least survived the corporate equivalent of a depth-charge barrage. Legendary Television is producing with the Irwin Allen estate, Jon Jashni is also executive producing and Derek Thielges is co-producer. No premiere date has been set.
Whether the new Seaview keeps the old girl’s glass observation nose, her flying sub or her weakness for a monster of the week remains to be seen. Our ambition is modest. One episode, just one, in which the entire crew lurches left in perfect unison while the camera wobbles. Some traditions deserve preserving at any depth.
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