As promotion for Aquaman 2 titled Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom kicks off in earnest. The film’s director, James Wan, finally addresses rumors concerning Amber Heard’s removed scenes in the upcoming DC sequel.
The rumors surrounding Amber Heard’s reduced scenes in Aquaman 2 first surfaced during her now-infamous court case with former partner Jonny Depp. As with many celebrity separations, the fans took sides with their favorite between the two. Depp fans demanded that WB remove Heard’s character, Mera, from the Aquaman sequel. In contrast, her fans threatened to boycott the film if WB substantially reduced her role.
Further, during the trial, Amber Heard herself claimed that Warner Bros. pared down her role in the sequel due to her case with Depp. She also said she received “new versions of the script” that no longer featured action scenes involving her character.
However, the film’s director, James Wan, has addressed these rumors in a new interview with Entertainment Weekly. He clarified that the film’s focus was always on Aquaman (Jason Momoa) and his half-brother Orm (Patrick Wilson). With Mera playing a reduced role in the film. He said:
“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.”
The director also addressed fan’s concerns over the recent stories about reshoots that Aquaman 2 underwent so as to fit into James Gunn and Peter Safran plans for their DCU reboot. He stated that:
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.”
It seems that despite speculations about studio interference with the filming of Aquaman 2 nothing is amiss. However, we can only hope that the final product lives up to expectations.
Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom will premiere in theaters worldwide on December 20.