James Wan wants Aquaman to have its own cinematic universe, plans third movie

James Wan is super keen to make Aquaman 3 – and he doesn't want to stop there either. At an exclusive trailer-reveal event for the upcoming second movie in LA recently, the filmmaker touched on his hope of one day turning the series into a cinematic universe, which'd take viewers to all corners of Atlantis.

"The Jason Momoa story as Aquaman definitely has more places to go. The world building is very important," Wan told GamesRadar+ and other press. "We enjoy all the different worlds that no other superhero movies go into. That's what's so cool about the Aquaman films, it's really standalone. It lives in its own universe. 

"My dream would be to create a Seven Kingdoms cinematic universe and visit all the different worlds that we touch on with these two films. Like the first movie, this one leans into the Ray Harryhausen spirit even more," he continued. "There are shades of Jules Verne in this as well. As you can see in the trailer, I'm aesthetically leaning pretty heavily into the 1960s Silver Age comic book of Aquaman, so a lot of the designs in this film have a very retro feeling. The spirit and the tone is very retro. It is a little bit darker than the first movie, as second movies tend to be, which felt like the correct progression for this film."

Starring Amber Heard, Temuera Morrison, Dolph Lundgren, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Nicole Kidman, and Jason Momoa, Aquaman 2 sees the titular superhero form an unlikely alliance with his brother Orm (Patrick Wilson) to save Atlantis... and the world. It wasn't set to be the only Aquaman movie coming out soon, though. 

Around the time Warner Bros. Pictures greenlit the follow-up, the studio also announced that Wan was developing a movie centered on the Trench, the dark, monster-filled depths Aquaman ventures to briefly in the first movie. Unfortunately, though, the project was killed in early 2021.

"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 could use in this one," Wan explained recently. "The Trench movie was going to be a secret Black Manta movie. Initially, we announced it as a Trench movie, but ultimately we wanted to surprise the fan because it was going to be a standalone Black Manta movie. When that didn't happen, a lot of those ideas found their way into this."

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom releases in theaters on December 20. In the meantime, check out our guide to all the upcoming DC movies and TV shows.