The DCEU seems to be in trouble. With both Shazam! Fury of the Gods and The Flash bombing hard at the box office, the remaining movies of 2023, Blue Beetle and Aquaman 2, are under a lot of pressure to redeem the franchise. Seems like Aquaman 2 is struggling to keep up with those expectations, though, as the movie has gone through multiple reshoots as of now, and it looks like it's Batman's fault!
Aquaman is one of DCs most iconic characters and one of the OG members of the Justice League, alongside titans like Superman, The Flash and Batman. As the half-human, half-Atlantean son of the royal bloodline, he became the King of the underwater kingdom of Atlantis and rules over the 7 seas, commanding both fish and Atlanteans.
Aquaman 2: Three Reshoots And Two Batmans Later
With how successful the first movie turned out and James Gunn's experienced leadership over the DCEU as a whole, you would expect things to go more smoothly with their projects going forward.
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Well, that didn't happen as Aquaman 2's production turns out to be more chaotic than ever, as it is going through more reshoots than there are DC movies this year!
Not only has the movie had more reshoots than there are Aquaman movies, they also cycled through more Batman actors than there are good DC movies! Okay, that might be a little over the top, but still!
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Aquaman 2 at some point was supposed to feature Michael Keaton's Batman (which was then cut), but that got shifted to Ben Affleck's portrayal of the world's greatest detective (which has now also been cut).
It really seems like James Wan doesn't know what to do with Batman in this movie and therefore decided to completely leave him out of the movie. James Gunn and Peter Safran argued that they “do not want to promise a movie universe that will not come to fruition, nor tie it down excessively to past failures” but that just seems like an excuse.
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Luckily, the same report revealed, that James Gunn finally got involved for the third reshoot of the movie and put an end to this production hell, by approving the most recent version of the film.
So maybe we'll actually get Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom to release on December 20, 2023, if they don't go for another round of reshoots that is.
DC really is best at providing awesome animated movies, but they're not the only one with fantastic adaptations like that:
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