James Wan Says Aquaman Will Be a Hard Technical Film to Shoot

Aquaman director James Wan at a panel for The Conjuring 2 at Wondercon, which took place this past weekend, spoke to journalists on a press line, where questions on the solo Aquaman movie were asked.

For Slashfilm, Wan revealed that the world of Aquaman is inspiring some of his horror sensibilities:

“I think, like most people, we are familiar with Aquaman,” Wan said. “We grew up reading or watching this character on the peripheral. I was never so in depth with Aquaman as, let’s say, I was with X-Men. I grew up loving X-Men, Spider-Man and Batman. Those are obviously the key big ones, but there’s always something kind of cool about Aquaman still, the idea of creating a huge world that is on our planet. That’s the thing about Aquaman that’s cool is he’s not an alien, right? He’s from our planet and he’s from a society that we’re not privy to in the context of the story. Isn’t it crazy to think that we’ve explored space more than we have explored the depths of our ocean? That just fires up my imagination about potential sea monsters and cool creatures, that kind of stuff.”

Wan also give out these other tidbits during the press questions:

• Though Warner Bros.’ Justice League universe has been established as dark and gritty, Wan told reporters that anything he does will still have a sense of fun.
• Wan likes to describe his big studio movies, like Furious 7 and Aquaman, as playing in someone else’s sandbox, but he can still create his own castle.
• Wan consideres Aquaman the underdog superhero, that people pick on him and make fun of him (think Entourage). He has the chance to break people’s expectations.
• Wan likes that Aquaman is a fresh character who’s never been done in a movie before, as opposed to, say, Batman, Superman or Spider-Man.
• As a fan of world creation, Aquaman gives Wan a chance to create a new world (see his quote above about the world beneath the depths of our own planet).
• Regarding the technical challenge, Wan expects Aquaman to be “a motherfucker” to shoot, but he will apply the same mentality he uses on low budget films. First and foremost, you have to create cool characters.

 

Then in an interview with Cinemablend, Wan confirmed that Snyder was allowing him to do what he wanted with the story he wants to tell:

Well, I think the story that I would like to tell is still at the end of the day my story. And that’s what’s cool with Zack, is that he’s actually very respectful of that. He’s actually helping me out in some ways with certain things that he’s doing with his [films] so that I can have better groundwork with the standalone Aquaman story.