2018 was nutty at the box office. Five films cracked the $1 billion mark, three of the five were superhero movies and four if you count “Incredibles 2” which is essentially an animated superhero film. Coming in at the fifth slot was Warner Bros.’ “Aquaman” which has currently made $1.1 billion worldwide and is still not done playing in theaters. It’s a major feat considering the narrative surrounding DC Films and the fact “Aquaman” was mildly ridiculed and somewhat skeptically received at Comic-Con last summer. The film, starring Jason Momoa, turned out to be a monster-sized whale of a hit regardless, and restored some goodwill to the DCEU, following the major financial embarrassment of “Justice League.”
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Warner Bros. had undoubtedly made a lot of strange choices throughout the last six year when the new DCEU was launched with Zack Snyder’s “Man Of Steel” in 2013. Management has changed several times over, and so has the creative direction (Snyder, once the Kevin Feige of the DCEU is gone, though retains EVP credit on a number of films).
One of the strangest of late, is the announcement that Warner Bros. is developing an “Aquaman” spin-off, not of Mera (Amber Heard) or one of the other significant characters, but instead, a spin-off of the Trench, the monstrous amphibian creatures of the dark that appear in what is arguably the movie’s most magnificent setpiece (we called it one of the best action sequences of 2018).
While there are no direct talks of a sequel yet with Momoa or director James Wan (who appears to be taking a wait and see approach to a script), clearly Warner Bros. wants more “Aquaman” of some sort and have hired newcomer screenwriters, Noah Gardner and Aidan Fitzgerald, to pen a “horror-tinged” spin-off.
Wan and Peter Safran, the lead producer on “Aquaman,” will produce the project, Titled “The Trench,” the project will apparently be more modestly budgeted than the normal DC superhero tentpole, which makes one wonder if WB will take this spin-off the route of cheapo horror spin-offs like many of adjunct “The Conjuring” films (which might be strange considering that The Trench are really all CGI and you don’t want to skimp on that, but whatever, I guess).
“The Trench” isn’t a headscratcher from this perspective. “The Conjuring” movies and their spin-offs aren’t as expensive as most significant franchises, and make a tidy sum each year. However, what does this have to do with superheroes and isn’t WB concerned with keeping the reputation of the DCEU clean considering how many false starts they’ve had?
Frankly, who knows. The company, which has Batman and Joker in one timeline, and the current DCEU in another (with another Batman and Joker), seems to be all over the map and to me, doesn’t appear to have much of a plan other than “hits,” but hey, more power to them (and it is the company developing “Super Pets“).
“The Trench” is not expected to feature any “Aquaman” stars which is more evidence of Wan and Safran’s make-a-buck horror spin-offs. In the movie, The Trench is revealed to be part of the kingdom of Atlantis but when it sunk, inhabitants who were cut off from other survivors and evolved into ravenous monsters. [THR]