To paraphrase Mel Brooks, it's good to be the king...of Atlantis.
The Hollywood Reporter has revealed that DC Comics superhero Aquaman is expected to get a solo film of his own after presumably appearing in Zack Snyder's Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice in 2016. Writers Will Beall and Kurt Johnstad are reportedly working on separate scripts for Aquaman as one of Warner Brothers' attempt to build a DC Comics cinematic universe similar to Marvel's.
Beall was a former writer on the Justice League film back in 2012, but his script was apparently scrapped a year later due to negative reaction from the studio. He wrote the film Gangster Squad and has also written episodes of the ABC series Castle. Johnstad, meanwhile, is one of Snyder's preferred writers that he used on the films 300 and 300: Rise of an Empire.
According to the article, Aquaman is being developed on dual tracks, where studios and producers hire two separate writers to work on the same project in the hopes of getting the best version. This move allows release dates to be set while a project is still in development to accelerate pre-production. Last week, Warner Bros. scheduled dates for nine untitled DC movies between 2016 and 2020 and it seems Aquaman will be one of them.
Created by Paul Norris in 1941's More Fun Comics #73, Aquaman is a founding member of the Justice League whose Atlantean mother fell in love with a lighthouse keeper named Tom Curry. Discovering as a youth that he could survive underwater and communicate telepathically with sea life, Arthur Curry eventually used his superhuman strength and swimming speed to become the defender of Earth's oceans and often assuming his destiny as the King of Atlantis.
The current rumored favorite for the first movie on August 5, 2016 is probably Shazam!, followed most likely by Justice League on June 23, 2017. The next one on November 17, 2017 could be Aquaman, or perhaps Wonder Woman, or possibly a rumored team-up movie starring The Flash and Green Lantern.
Back in June, former Game of Thrones actor Jason Momoa was reported to be cast as Aquaman in Batman V Superman, but there still hasn't been official confirmation (nor a denial) from Warner Bros.
Last week, Snyder called in to local Detroit radio station 97.1 The Ticket after hearing
Bill McAllister and fellow hosts making fun about Aquaman and wanting to set the record straight about the character's appeal. "I don’t want to give anything away about the movie or anything like that, but you know, Aquaman has some cool abilities," said Snyder. "People are like, ‘does he talk to animals?’ because that seems to be what he does, or fish or whatever, but the cool thing is, his trident, that can actually cut the flesh of Superman if, you know, they came in contact, that’s in the canon."
Snyder continued, remarking, "He’s super-strong, because of course he can exist in these super-depths so that, when he comes up here he’s crazy strong. Not to say he’s in my movie or anything like that, but he has the potential to be badass, that’s all I’m saying."