Had the young Jules Verne actually met a character like Phileas Fogg? Had Fogg helped him travel the world gathering material? What about Napoleon III? Had Jules ever come across him? Had he spent more time in America than his official biography admits? Had he ever reached the Wild West ­- and, if so, what had he done there?

Once my imagination began to work, there was no stopping it, but it was many years before I was able to persuade someone -­ or several someones -­ to invest the large sums of money needed to actually put these ideas onscreen. In the end we managed to raise enough cash to rent a huge old engine repair shed in Montreal, with the railway tracks still running through it. There we built an entire Paris street, the sewers, a castle, dungeons, a cave, and best of all the Aurora -- the incredible flying ship in which Jules and Phileas Fogg travel around the world.