James Wan, director of Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, is speaking out.
The 46-year-old filmmaker spoke to Entertainment Weekly about many of the rumors circulating the DC sequel, including ones involving the 37-year-old actress.
Rumors swirled that the film required three rounds of reshoots amid the executive overhaul at DC Studios, as it was taken over by James Gunn and Peter Safran.
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“The tricky thing early on was not knowing whether Aquaman would come out first or come out after [The Flash]. So, we just had to be prepared. At the end of the day, the best thing I would say about this movie is that it is not connected in any way to any of those films. That’s the bottom line,” he explained.
There were also rumors that Batman actors such as Ben Affleck and Michael Keaton were brought in for Aquaman 2.
“That’s a ‘no comment,’ right now. You’re going to have to wait for the movie to come out,” he said.
He also did not dispute a claim that James Gunn “weighed in” on the sequel, adding: “I’ve known James since way back, right? We’re horror guys, and so I’m definitely open to ideas. But, at the end of the day, this is my movie.”
“We have big actors in this movie, and everyone’s schedule is really hard. So, we had to break up our shooting schedule into sections. We’ll shoot a bit here now, because this actor’s available, and then we’ll do another shoot now, because this guy’s available. People are like, ‘Oh, they’re doing a whole bunch of different shoots!’ No. If we actually combined them all together, it’s actually not that many number of days at all.”
He was also asked about Amber Heard, who plays Mera. During her 2022 defamation trial involving ex Johnny Depp, she claimed in court that Warner Bros. “didn’t want to include me” in the sequel due to the fallout of her divorce, saying it was “pared down” and action scenes were “taken away.”
The director clarified that the movie was never meant to focus on Mera and Aquaman like the 2018 film, saying it always prioritized Aquaman’s relationship to his villainous half-brother, Orm (Patrick Wilson), instead.
“I always pitched this to everyone from the get-go. The first Aquaman was Arthur and Mera’s journey. The second movie was always going to be Arthur and Orm. So, the first was a romance action-adventure movie, the second one is a bromance action-adventure movie. We’ll leave it at that.”
He then addressed the possibility of a third movie, saying: “We’ve set up certain things in a good place in the second movie that you can definitely draw upon in a third.”
He wasn’t so sure if he’d direct it, though: “This film has taken up so, so much of my life, so much of my time, all I can think about now is taking a long break,” he said of the film, which hits theaters December 20.
Check out the first teaser footage!