“Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom” director James Wan told Empire magazine for a new cover story that the reshoot process on his latest DC tentpole was not out of the ordinary, despite many reports claiming post-production on the sequel was a disaster and required at least three rounds of reshoots.
“We probably did seven or eight days,” Wan clarified about the reshoots, “which is nothing for a movie of this size. It was just spread out because it’s so hard to get your actors back once you’ve finished the initial shoot.”
Wan previously addressed the reshoot rumors in an Entertainment Weekly interview, saying, “We have big actors in this movie, and everyone’s schedule is really hard,. So, we had to break up our shooting schedule into sections. We’ll shoot a bit here now, because this actor’s available, and then we’ll do another shoot now, because this guy’s available. People are like, ‘Oh, they’re doing a whole bunch of different shoots!’ No. If we actually combined them all together, it’s actually not that many number of days at all.”
In his Empire interview, Wan said that he’s “had to learn to be more Zen in dealing with all the noise” around him given the rampant speculation about “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom.” A Variety report from earlier this month included claims of Jason Momoa being drunk on set during production, among other claims. Notes from Amber Heard’s therapist revealed she felt unsupported by Wan during filming.
“I’m a pretty private person,” he told Empire. “I don’t get on social media and have fights, but it’s difficult because this narrative has emerged that is not the reality. The noise is fun to write about, and it gets clicks, but people don’t know the truth.”
Wan told the publication that “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom” is his superhero spin on “Tango & Cash,” the 1989 buddy action comedy starring Sylvester Stallone and Kurt Russell. In Wan’s version, the buddy comedy is between Aquaman and his half-brother, Orm (Patrick Wilson).
“From the start, I pitched that the first film would be a ‘Romancing The Stone’-type thing – an action-adventure romantic comedy – while the second would be an outright buddy comedy,” he said. “I wanted to do ‘Tango & Cash.’ Jason plays Arthur larger-than-life; Patrick plays the straight man. It’s not unlike what Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones did in ‘Men In Black’ – like Tommy, Patrick plays it dry, but very funny.”
“Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom” is set to open in theaters Dec. 20 from Warner Bros.