What Could Have Been: In one interview, Alan Moore said that he originally considered having Irene Adler lead the team, but ultimately settled on Mina Harker instead because he worried that Adler was too obscure. (More specifically, he apparently couldn't remember Irene Adler's name).
Working Title: The League of Extraordinary Gentlefolk. Moore changed the name to Gentlemen to better reflect the Victorian era.
Actor-Inspired Heroism: In the comic, Alan Quatermain was introduced as an opium addict. This was changed when Sean Connery refused to play a drug addict.
Creator Backlash: Richard Roxburgh later referred to the finished film as "an unadulterated stinker", saying that he realized too late, when he arrived on set during the first day, that the film was going to be a bad experience.
Director Stephen Norrington had such a bad experience making the film that he announced he would never direct another movie. So far, he hasn't.
Even worse, Sean Connery became so disenchanted with the moviemaking process with this film that afterwards he announced his retirement, except for some voiceover work. Despite a few offers, he never appeared on screen again until his death in 2020.
Deleted Role: A character named Eva Draper (Winter Ave Zoli), the daughter of German scientist Karl Draper, was removed during editing but remained in some of the promotional material. Eva had appeared in two scenes: one ended up on the cutting room floor, and she was digitally replaced with a different character in the other. A brief fight scene featuring Tom Sawyer and the replacement character was rotoscoped into the film. The deleted scenes which feature Draper appear on the DVD.
Deleted Scene: A scene was cut from the film where Tom Sawyer explains that he and his friend, Agent Huck Finn, were tracking down the Fantom, and that the Fantom killed Huck. This is the reason why Sawyer is so intent on getting the Fantom.
Alan Moore, who's already notoriously stingy about adaptations of his work, hated the film so much that he demanded his name be left off of all future ones. It should be noted that Moore was initially okay with the film until legal issues cropped up over the film's similarity to an unproduced screenplay. The fact that the studio settled the lawsuit rather than allow Moore to defend himself ultimately soured him toward any future adaptations of his works - in fact, he's only made two exceptions since: the Justice League Unlimited episode that adapted For the Man Who Has Everything, and Harry Partridge's animated parody Saturday Morning Watchmen.
In an interview with The Times, Kevin O'Neill, illustrator of the comics, said he believed this movie failed because it was not respectful of the source material. He did not recognize the characters when reading the screenplay, and claimed that director Stephen Norrington and Sir Sean Connery did not cooperate. Finally, O'Neill said that the comic book version of Allan Quatermain was a lot better than the movie version, and that marginalizing Mina Murray as a vampire "changed the whole balance".
Executive Meddling: Tom Sawyer was added because the studio thought many people in the American market wouldn't care about the movie unless an American character were in it.
Follow the Leader: May not be deliberate given that this film was not exactly a leader, but Moriarty's plot in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows bears great resemblance to his plot here, as both see Moriarty attempting to trigger the First World War decades in advance and profit by selling weapons to both sides.
Hostility on the Set: Sean Connery had a particularly bad working relationship with Stephen Norrington. 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." In a Q and A with Empire Magazine, Jason Flemyng was asked if the bust-ups between them were as bad as reported. He replied:
They were worse. They were so much worse. You know when someone in your class is getting told off and your toes curl in your black Clarks' shoes? That's how it was. My favourite bust-up was in Venice. The League had to walk from Captain Nemo's boat down the street, Magnificent Seven-style. At the end of the take Sean shouted to Norrington, "What? You want us to do that again?" He replied, "For eighteen million dollars I don't think it's too much to ask you to walk down a road". To which Connery's reply was unprintable.
Missing Trailer Scene: Three clips from the original script, also featured in the novelization, are shown in the U.K. trailer. The first is Captain Nemo, Dr. Jekyll, and Skinner on the conning tower of the Nautilus. The second shows Eva Draper, a character completely cut from the movie, just before Sawyer saves Quatermain's life in M's fortress chamber. The third is when Quatermain chases the Fantom through Venice, and tackles some of his henchmen on a boat. These are all brief, but clearly seen.
No Stunt Double: Naseeruddin Shah trained with a Karate master to do much of his own fighting stunt work as Nemo.
The film was taken to court on a plagiarism claim made by two script writers claiming it used ideas they had presented to the studio under the name Cast of Characters. Notably this seems to have been unknown to both Alan Moore and the main producers. However Dorian Gray and Tom Sawyer weren't on the team in the comics but were in the other script, making it look like someone at the studio used the idea and the writers felt they deserved a check for it. Like most cases of public domain plagiarism, it was quickly settled out of court. The movie was made, however this left a very bad taste in Alan Moore's mouth, feeling he had been denied a chance to defend himself.
Why the main villain is the Fantom rather than Dr. Fu Manchu—Sax Rohmer's estate controls the rights.
Star-Derailing Role: Nearly all of the main cast went through major career slumps after this film, though Sean Connery, Peta Wilson and Stuart Townsend were affected the worst:
Connery had already been considering calling time on his long acting career due to dissatisfaction with Hollywood politics, and finally did so after this film, only coming out of retirement for Sir Billi, of all things, and even then only to support the Scottish animation industry.
Wilson was hoping to use the movie to kick-start her big screen career, having made it famous playing the title role in La Femme Nikita; instead, her acting career was all but ruined, and she only made sporadic appearances in the years ahead before retiring in the early 2010s to focus on raising her family.
Townsend, having already been smarting from losing the role of Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings and the failure of Queen of the Damned, found his career going nowhere fast after this, with almost all of his subsequent roles being in television.
To a lesser extent this affected Shane West, who was billed almost as prominently as Connery in the advertising, but failed to earn a film career out of this. That said, his TV career had been going strong for years beforehand and continued to do so afterwardsnote (One of his most famous roles ironically enough being playing the male lead in the 2010s remake of LXG co-star Peta Wilson's former starring vehicle, La Femme Nikita), so the film didn't really hurt his career per se, it just didn't help it any.
Stillborn Franchise: A planned sequel was cancelled 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 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". All the cast (barring Stuart Townsend) signed on for multiple films.
Troubled Production: As if the conflicts between Sean Connery and Stephen Norrington weren't enough, filming in Prague was delayed when a flood destroyed the set.
Roger Moore was offered a cameo as Campion Bond, a part that was ultimately cut from the script, and would've been the first time two actors to have played James Bond shared the screen.
The ending was supposed to have Quatermain's hand come out of the dirt to grab his rifle before cutting to black. A Call-Back to what he said earlier in the film, "Africa will never let me die." But that wasn't used because they want to leave it ambiguous. At the least though it left the film open-ended rather then set up for a sequel that'll never come.
