Sean Anderson partners with his mom's boyfriend on a mission to find his grandfather, who is thought to be missing on a mythical island. Trivia The original Jules Verne story "A Journey to the Centre of the Earth" (1864), on which the first movie is loosely based, never had a sequel. However, another Jules Verne story "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" (1870), did have a sequel, called "The Mysterious Island", which was released in 1874 and followed a family stranded on an island in the South Pacific, which is a plot point in this movie.