You’ve undoubtedly heard the rumors already. Amber Heard’s role in Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom was drastically reduced, due to a couple of reported issues. The first was the lack of chemistry between Heard and Aquaman star Jason Momoa. The second is the general bad publicity surrounding her ever since the Johnny Depp trial. With the film finally due to arrive this December, new salacious reports have surfaced at Variety that suggest it could be the biggest DCEU flop of the year, which is no small feat given how bad things have been.
Court documents from the Heard/Depp trial, as well as other anonymous sources, describe an Aquaman 2 production that was pure chaos. About reports that Heard saw her role cut, the actress wasn’t happy and got help from her then-boyfriend, the despicable Elon Musk, who threatened the studio with legal action if they fired her. Instead, it looks as if two of her biggest scenes, an action scene and a love scene with Momoa, were dropped.
In what sounds like a joke somebody made up, Heard alleged that Momoa would arrive on set drunk and dressed as Johnny Depp just to harass her. Momoa’s reps dispute this, of course, but it makes you wonder if there are set photos of him dressed as Jack Sparrow or Sweeney Todd? That would be interesting.
Finally, test screenings of the film were reportedly terrible, causing the studio to call for massive reshoots all the way up to the recent WGA strike. The studio says there was only one week of reshoots, which is normal, but who knows if they’re being honest?
This does not seem like a James Wan production at all. Wan usually has pretty smooth sailing when he takes the helm of a project, but this sounds like a nightmare. Given the failures of Shazam: Fury of the Gods, The Flash, and Blue Beetle, we could see Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom as one final black eye on the Snyderverse.
