The best way to describe James Wan’s career is to look at his 2015-2018. He went from one fun movie that made over $1 billion at the box office (Furious 7), to a spooky low-budget (comparatively speaking) horror movie (The Conjuring 2), to another fun movie that made over $1 billion at the box office (Aquaman). He’s able to exist in two worlds, like Arthur Curry reconciling his human and Atlantean sides, and he’ll combine his horror roots with his blockbuster expertise in Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom.
Wan told Total Film that the Aquaman sequel owes a debt to a 1965 Italian science-fiction horror film. “Aquaman 2 is very heavily inspired by Planet of the Vampires,” he said. “You can take the boy out of horror but you can never take the horror out the boy.” In the trailer for Planet of the Vampires, a spaceship crew land on a planet where “the living dead try to escape into life.” Jason Momoa would’ve decked the life out of them.
Wan continued:
“Well, the first movie took a lot of people by surprise, right? And that’s partially because they were not familiar with the comic book, which deals in this very lurid, strange world. People were taken aback that I didn’t throw all that stuff away and make a dark, heavy film. But I didn’t feel that would have been right for it. So with the second film, I feel it will be easier for people to accept where we go because I’ve already laid the foundation.”
As long as the octopus drummer is back, I’m in.
Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom opens on December 16.
(Via Total Film)