Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom Trailer, Release Date, Cast, Review, Budget & More

Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom

An upcoming superhero movie in the United States called Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is based on the DC superhero Aquaman. It is the follow-up to Aquaman (2018) and the 15th and last film in the DC Extended Universe (DCEU), and it was produced by DC Studios, Atomic Monster, and The Safran Company. Warner Bros. Pictures will distribute it. James Wan is the director of the movie, with David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick writing the screenplay and Thomas Pa'a Sibbett and Jason Momoa coming up with the story. Along with Momoa, Patrick Wilson, Amber Heard, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, and Nicole Kidman, it features Momoa as Arthur Curry/Aquaman.

At the time the first Aquaman movie was being made, Momoa offered a plot for a follow-up. Wan agreed to supervise development in January 2019 despite not wanting to expedite a sequel. A month later, Johnson-McGoldrick agreed to return as a screenwriter, and August 2020 was announced as Wan's return date as director. In June 2021, he revealed the title of the sequel and promised that it would expand on Aquaman's worldbuilding. Filming took place in the United Kingdom, Hawaii, Los Angeles, and New Jersey, with additional shooting taking place in New Zealand, starting at the end of the month and ending in January 2022.

Release date

On December 20, 2023, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is slated for release in the US.

About

Jason Momoa, the star of Aquaman (2018), created a story concept for a follow-up and presented it to producer Peter Safran and chairman Toby Emmerich of the Warner Bros. Pictures Group. Momoa stated he would be more involved in the creation of a prospective sequel in October 2018, before the movie's release, and that he anticipated filming to start in 2019. Seven undersea kingdoms were introduced in the movie Aquaman, according to director James Wan, and there are various storylines that might develop from there. Momoa received a $15 million salary as compensation.

By the beginning of December, Emmerich felt confident enough in the movie's box office forecasts to start talking about a sequel.Warner Bros was in talks with Wan to supervise the creation and writing of a sequel with the possibility that he might also serve as director by the time Aquaman opened at the end of January and was on track to become the highest-grossing DC Comics character-based movie ever. According to Geoff Boucher of Deadline Hollywood, Wan was "deeply invested" in the worldbuilding of Aquaman and had been highly protective of the sequels to his previous movies, Insidious (2010) and The Conjuring (2013). Wan had previously contrasted the Aquaman universe with other made-up settings, including Middle-earth, the Star Wars universe, and the Wizarding World.

Warner Bros. hired Noah Gardner and Aidan Fitzgerald in early February 2019 to create the story for the Aquaman spin-off movie The Trench, which is based on one of the kingdoms mentioned in the original movie. With Wan and Safran producing, it was anticipated to have a cheaper budget and omit the Aquaman movie's key actors.According to Borys Kit of The Hollywood Reporter, the studio, Wan, and Momoa wanted to take a "breather" before holding serious conversations regarding a direct sequel to Aquaman. Nevertheless, a few days later, Kit revealed that active production on a follow-up had commenced with the hiring of co-writer of the original movie and regular collaborator with Wan David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick to write the screenplay. Even while it was unclear if Wan would serve as the film's director, Wan and Safran were producing the sequel.

Warner Bros set the release date for Aquaman 2 on December 16, 2022, at the end of February. The release of the sequel was set for four years after the original movie because Safran and Wan did not want to rush it, and Warner Bros. had been supportive of it, according to Safran's explanation the following month.The Aquaman series, he continued, was being approached similarly to the Conjuring Universe, with spin-offs like The Trench exploring tales of the undersea kingdoms alongside the Aquaman "mothership" movies. In a statement to Safran, Wan claimed to be familiar with "the architecture, the armoury, the military, the look, the feel, the general vibe" of all seven kingdoms and that he wished to examine each one in upcoming works.

Before starting on Aquaman 2, Wan was scheduled to helm the movie Malignant (2021) in July 2019. Patrick Wilson revealed in November that he had spoken with Wan about the sequel's intentions and that he will be returning as the original movie's Orm Marius/Ocean Master. A month later, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II announced that he will be playing David Kane/Black Manta once more and that he intended to give the character more depth.

After her ex-husband Johnny Depp accused her of domestic abuse, Amber Heard denied rumors that she wouldn't be repeating her role as Mera from the first movie in November. When allegations made by The Sun that Depp had abused Heard were found to be "substantially true" in a defamation lawsuit Depp filed against The Sun, Warner Bros. removed Depp from Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (2022). That same month, a petition to have Heard fired from the franchise garnered more than 1.5 million signatures.

Safran claimed that they would not respond to the "pure fan pressure" of the petition and other online discussions and that they had never contemplated filming the movie without Heard. Heard later claimed (during a defamation lawsuit brought by Depp over a column in The Washington Post) that "they didn't want to include" her in the movie and that she had to fight to keep her part. She claimed that script revisions reduced her role to a "very pared down version," including removing action sequences for her character, and that she was unable to renegotiate her contract.

The petition to get Heard removed from the movie had amassed more than 4 million signatures by the time it reached that point, in May 2022. The studio did contemplate recasting Mera, but this was due to worries about Heard's lack of chemistry with Momoa rather than the abuse claims, according to DC Films President Walter Hamada's testimony during the same trial.

The magnitude of Heard's role had not changed during the creation of the sequel, the executive continued, adding that it was the studio's attitude to "hold people to their options" and refrain from renegotiating contracts. He clarified that the movie was always meant to be a "buddy comedy" that centered on Aquaman and Orm's connection.The jury in the defamation case determined that Heard's Washington Post piece had harmed Depp's career, and they ordered her to make restitution. There were "countless memes and TikToks mocking her testimony" in the social media reactions to the trial, which strongly favored Depp over Heard. Reports that Heard had left the movie after the trial surfaced in June 2022, but these were also refuted.

Music

In August 2021, Rupert Gregson-Williams said that he will be returning to compose the score for the sequel after doing so for the first movie.

Upcoming Updates of DC

Following Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, The Hollywood Reporter reported in December 2022 that Warner Bros. was considering discontinuing the Aquaman film series and recasting Momoa as Lobo. Momoa said he will "always be Aquaman" in January 2023, but he also thought he could play other roles. Later that month, co-CEOs of DC Studios James Gunn and Safran stated that Momoa might return to his position in the DCU, but that no decision had been made regarding the character.If they did cast Momoa as Lobo, he would not play Aquaman in the DC Universe because no actor would be portraying more than one character.

Gunn announced that Superman: Legacy (2025), the first picture in the DC Extended Universe, would follow Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom and The Flash. After a lengthy hiatus, Wan subsequently remarked that the second movie will help build up a sequel and expressed some interest in helming it.