Over the weekend fans were pointing out on social media that it was less than 100 days until Aquaman 2 hit cinemas with no sign of the first trailer, as rumours swirled that Warner Bros had essentially “abandoned” the film.
Yet following previous reports of a “chaotic” production, the first teaser for Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom arrived online today, teasing that first full trailer will land on Thursday.
The first footage of Jason Momoa and Amber Heard’s sequel to what remains the highest-grossing DC movie of all time ($1.150 billion) is full of CGI-fuelled action.
Highlights include Yahya Abdul-Mateen II’s Black Manta exclaiming, “I’m going to kill Aquaman and destroy everything he holds dear” and Arthur Curry actually riding a giant seahorse.
The 2023 blockbuster follows a year of DCEU flops and will be the last entry in the franchise before James Gunn reboots it as the DCU with 2025’s Superman: Legacy.
Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom wrapped all the way back in January 2022 and according to The Hollywood Reporter spent last summer in a string of test screenings with “uninspiring” results.
Back in February, leaker ViewerAnon went as far as to claim: “I’ll be honest, we’re half a dozen test screenings in and it’s not looking great. I’ve consistently heard over the last half year or so that it’s boring, not as good as the first, and potentially one of the worst DCEU movies.
“This is one of the bad things about being a scooper: I don’t want to s*** on movies but at a certain point, when people know there have been a lot of test screenings our silence becomes pretty telling. I like Wan, I know he’s had a rough time on this one, I hope it works out.” This was backed up by a number of other respected comic book movie scoopers.
In the autumn of last year, new Warner Bros film boss Pam Abdy started getting involved in editing a cut of Aquaman 2. However, the test screening for this version of the movie scored even worse than in previous ones.
As a result, a new round of reshoots were called which included Ben Affleck’s Batman replacing plans for more of Michael Keaton’s incarnation of the character from The Flash and the now-shelved Batgirl.
However, insiders claim that now that James Gunn is head of DC Studios and overseeing the release of the last DCEU movies, the Batman scenes have been cut following more test screenings this year. The reason allegedly is because the franchise is being rebooted so there’s no point in teasing more to come. This is much like how Henry Cavill’s Man of Steel was in the Black Adam end credits scene only to have his promised return to DC dropped for Gunn’s plans with new Superman: Legacy star David Corenswet.
The Hollywood Reporter wrote: “Insiders say that the filmmakers were in the dumps over the seemingly never-ending postproduction process and water-logged test scores. However, the skies may have cleared with the new reshoots.”
Gunn reportedly saw the most recent Aquaman 2 cut and greenlit a five-day set of reshoots; an “unprecedented” third round. However, the outlet’s sources claim this went well with director James Wan finishing in four days.
Given Warner Bros are dealing with a budget of $205 million even before all the reshoots in a film with CGI in every frame, the studio clearly believes in this blockbuster. After all, as mentioned the first is DC’s biggest film ever.
Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom hits cinemas on December 20, 2023.