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The troubled superhero sequel has gone way over budget and over schedule – and it still looks worse than The Flash. Can it be saved?
Three months out from its release, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom has already caused a splash. Unfortunately for Warner Brothers Discovery and its DC superhero empire, the waves created by the film are hardly calming. Amber Heard, star of 2018’s Aquaman, claims she has been written out of the sequel following her break-up with Johnny Depp and the ensuing libel trials. Jason Momoa, aka the eponymous Aquaman/Arthur Curry, admits he’s baffled at the original’s $1 billion box office. Director James Wan recently ended up in hospital, though he has denied stress over the tortured process of bringing the Lost Kingdom to the screen had anything to do with it.
“Every movie kills me as a director,” he told Entertainment Weekly – not quite the endorsement DC would have hoped for from the custodian of its fishiest franchise.
Wan has recovered. But the second Aquaman continues to gasp for air as it counts down to a December 20 release. Amid multiple reshoots, disastrous test screenings, and confusion over the involvement or absence of Batman actors Michael Keaton and Ben Affleck, it’s hard not to conclude that the project is cursed. A new CGI-heavy trailer doesn’t auger well. It suggests The Lost Kingdom has the same flimsy, fake look as the DC’s calamitous Flash feature from last summer. Given how badly The Flash flopped, it’s hard not to see how Aquaman could be anything other than a disaster.
Much of the bad luck around the Lost Kingdom has been outside the control of Wan and his production team. The original Aquaman was a surprise juggernaut and the most successful entry in DC’s troubled cinematic universe – earning $1.14 billion compared to the more hyped Justice League’s relatively paltry $658 million. In that context, a sequel received a green light in 2019 (after previous plans for a Lovecraftian spin-off based on Aquaman’s aquatic Trench monsters were ditched).