James Wan Reveals He Chose Aquaman Over The Flash

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James Wan in a recent interview with UpRoxx, while promoting his latest film The Conjuring 2, spoke on why he choose Aquaman and the fact that he was in talks with Warner Bros. for a long time and was considering other films, such as The Flash.

Is it fair to say without Furious 7 your upcoming Aquaman doesn’t happen? Are those the dots to connect?

I don’t know. Maybe it’s a bit of both? Before Furious 7, I had made The Conjuring for Warner Bros. So, I had already had a lot of conversations with Warner Bros. and they knew very early on that I had said I would love to be a part of the DC Universe. And this is early on. This is back in the early days when The Conjuring was just about to come out. So they’ve been talking to me about that…

So it goes back that far?

Yeah, we’ve been talking about it for awhile.

Was it always Aquaman? Or were other DC movies in the mix?

It was, well, oh jeez, this would be a big tidbit: They asked me which of the two characters I’d be interested in and it was between The Flash and Aquaman.

A lot of people might have picked The Flash. That’s interesting. How did you weigh those two?

This is how I weighed it: For me, we’ve seen various versions of The Flash…

He also discusses his love for the current TV Series The Flash and he than went on to speak on how Aquaman’s been a joke and needs to be shown for how cool he really is.

There’s a current popular television show.

Exactly. There’s a popular show on TV and there was a great one in the ‘90s.

I watched every episode.

Exactly. I loved that Flash! But the thing that ultimately pushed me more towards Aquaman is I love the possibility of creating a whole new world. I’ve always wanted to do a world creation story and visually create this amazing, incredible, magical kingdom. And also, I love the fact that Aquaman is an underdog character. I love the fact that people like to make fun of him. [Laughs.] I feel the bar is a lot lower and I can have fun with him!

Like on Entourage

Yeah, exactly. Everyone makes fun of him! And I actually don’t mind that! What it allows me to do: I think people are a lot less precious with him than, let’s say, you were doing a Spider-Man or a Batman or whatever.

There will not be a #notmyaquaman hashtag. Not many people have an Aquaman. Maybe the Superfriends version?

Exactly. That’s exactly it. I felt like it allows me the freedom to just tell the story of the character I wanted to tell. And I think what I proved for myself with Fast and Furious 7, how I took on this massive movie and I was able to overcome the tragedy that befell the production – I think it really proved to everyone I’m capable of doing more than just horror movies.

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