James Wan Talks Aquaman, Sea Monsters, Zack Snyder & Fun

The director of the upcoming Aquaman movie, James Wan, is known more for doing horror movies as Wan has directed and produced Saw, The Conjuring, and Insidious. Even though Aquaman is a super hero, it seems as if Wan’s horror expertise will be helping him out on the film as he tells Slash Film he is looking forward to the sea monsters:

“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.”

Batman Vs. Superman and Justice League‘s Zack Snyder is on board Aquaman as executive producer, with Wan letting it be known Snyder is laying the ground work in those films for his Aquaman movie (you can watch the Jason Momoa spoiler Batman Vs. Superman cameo here). Via Cinemablend:

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.

While the DCCU, at least to date, seems to be a lot more serious than the Marvel movies, Wan does note he still wants his Aquaman to come off as being fun. Via IGN:

The kind of filmmaker that I am…even my darker horror films generally are still very fun and I think that’s important for me and the kind of films I make. Aquaman is a character that a lot of people have made fun of over the years and I just think it’s fun to actually show a really different, cool, badass side to this character, but at the same time, let’s not forget to have fun with it.

Aquaman has a July 27, 2018 release starring Jason Momoa and Amber Heard as Mera.

Watch: Justice League Aquaman featurette: