A Black Manta Aquaman spin-off movie was once in the works but was canceled, its director has revealed. Thankfully, it wasn’t all in vain, as director James Wan said certain ideas from the Black Manta spin-off made it into the upcoming Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom.
“We had developed the Trench movie,” he explained during a live Q&A attended by IGN. “And ultimately, like most things you develop, if they work out, great. If they don't, then that's fine as well. We didn't want that project to potentially step on the Aquaman films, but we came up with a lot of really interesting ideas and really cool stuff that I felt we can use in this one.”
Ultimately, The Trench turned out to be a Black Manta solo movie. But while we’ve heard almost nothing about what that would have entailed, it looks as though we can expect to see some of its plot elements in Aquaman 2.
“The Trench movie, it was going to be a secret Black Manta movie,” explained Wan. “Initially we announced it as a Trench movie, but ultimately we wanted to surprise the fans because that was going to be a standalone Black Manta movie.
“When that didn't happen, some of those ideas found its way into this,” he added.
Aquaman 2 sees the return of Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as the villainous Black Manta, who appeared in the first movie as a regular human diver, albeit with a souped-up scuba suit. This time, however, it looks as though he’s getting a bit of an upgrade.
“At the end of the first movie, Manta is on this relentless quest to basically want to kill Arthur Curry, or just destroy everything that Arthur has built,” said Wan. “He’s been searching nonstop for ways to do that. I mean, without giving too much away here, in his search to try and fix the power suit that he had in the first movie that was all banged up and destroyed, he stumbles across something much bigger. And I'll just leave it at that.”
The new trailer reveals just what that is: the Black Trident. As you can see in the trailer, the Black Trident has an eerie-looking green glow that seemingly gives Black Manta some interesting new powers. It certainly levels the playing field when it comes to taking on Aquaman.
Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom heads to theaters on December 20, 2023.
IGN’s Aquaman review gave it 7.5/10 and said: “Aquaman is one hell of a popcorn movie – a fun time and a big bet for the DC movie universe that pays off in creating an exciting new realm for future installments to hopefully explore further. Wan’s geeky epic is chock-full of ridiculous elements and, on paper, it really shouldn’t work as well as it does, but it’s all so inherently weird and brazenly bonkers that the siren call of this giddy, otherworldly romp is hard to resist.”
Want to read more about Aquaman 2? Check out why Aquaman 2 is being praised for its visuals as well as how the Aquaman sequel has not been affected by the DCU reset.
Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.
