It looks like James Wan (The Conjuring) is going to bring his horror roots to the DCEU. During an interview with Total Film, by way of GamesRadar, the director revealed that the upcoming Jason Momoa led flick, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, is heavily inspired by the Italian horror movie Planet of the Vampires.
Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is currently filming, and is one of the most anticipated DC films scheduled to hit the big screen next year. Centred around our favourite Atlantean, it is pretty surprising to hear that a science fiction movie from the ’60s served as a massive influence on its presumably aquatic script. Planet of the Vampires is a horror film directed by Mario Bava. It tells the story of a crew stranded on a mysterious planet. Soon the planet’s inhabitants start killing off the crew, possessing their dead bodies to continue their murder spree. The film is credited for inspiring several iconic pieces of cinema, such as Ridley Scott’s Alien, and now it will guide Aquaman 2.
“Aquaman 2 is very heavily inspired by Planet of the Vampires,” Wan told Total Film. “You can take the boy out of horror, but you can never take the horror out of the boy.”
Currently, plot details are being kept under wraps for Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, but from Wan’s statement, it looks like we can expect the fish man to get a bit spooky. Wan says that fans are ready for this darker side of Aquaman, and explains how he wants to bring in more of the strange world seen in the DC comics to this new film.
“And that’s partially because they were not familiar with the comic book, which deals in this very lurid, strange world,” Wan said. “People were taken aback that I didn’t throw all that stuff away and make a dark, heavy film. But I didn’t feel that would have been right for it. So with the second film, I feel it will be easier for people to accept where we go because I’ve already laid the foundation.”
Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is scheduled to release on December 16, 2022.