James Wan says ideas from scrapped Aquaman spinoff could appear in another project

(Image credit: Warner Bros.)

The Trench, Aquaman’s horror spinoff starring Yahya Abdul-Mateen II’s Black Manta, may have sunk without a trace last year – but Aquaman director James Wan is open to some of those ideas finding a new lease of life elsewhere.

"I feel like everything I come up with, everything I do, if I come up with something that I don't end up using, that doesn't mean that I cannot be inspired to use that in a different way," Wan told ComicBook.com.

It’s not clear whether that means Aquaman and The Lost Kingdom – due out on March 17, 2023 – or one of the horror maestro’s non-comic book projects, but it’s heartening to know fragments of the project could still live on in some form.

"That's my problem, is I come up with a lot of ideas and I have so many ideas just percolating, but obviously, I can't use all of them," Wan explained. "So I would say of all the different thoughts and ideas I've come up with, I end up using maybe 20-30% of them in my work, and so I do have a drawer full of ideas that could develop into something else."

The Trench, first reported by The Hollywood Reporter in 2019, was conceived as a "horror-tinged" take on the Trench, the creatures first seen in the original Aquaman movie. It was later cancelled in 2021.

For more on what DC has in store, including adventures from the likes of Dwayne Johnson's Black Adam and Shazam, check out our guide to new superhero movies.