Aquaman director James Wan discusses his canceled DC spinoff movie The Trench and the possibility of reworking its horror concepts into another project. After getting his start in the world of horror, Wan transitioned to big-budget action blockbusters with Furious 7 in 2015 and followed that up with his entry into the DC Extended Universe in 2018. Starring the likes of Jason Momoa and Amber Heard, Aquaman grossed over $1 billion at the box office, the only DCEU movie to cross that threshold to date.
In the wake of Aquaman's success, Warner Bros. quickly greenlit a sequel, with Wan returning as director alongside much of the original cast. Eventually titled Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, the sequel wrapped filming earlier this year and is scheduled to be released next year on March 17. In addition to the sequel, Warner Bros. also greenlit a "horror-tinged" spinoff movie, The Trench, centered around Yahya Abdul-Mateen II's villain Black Manta and the titular bloodthirsty sea creatures. However, Warner Bros. canceled the development of The Trench spinoff movie in April 2021.
During a recent interview with ComicBook, Wan discussed the canceled DC spinoff in hindsight. When asked about reviving concepts from The Trench, the Aquaman director did not rule out the possibility and seemed open to reworking his ideas from the scrapped project into another, as this is something he has habitually done throughout his career. Read what Wan shared below:
Listen, I feel like everything I come up with, everything I do, if I come up with something that I don't end up using, that doesn't mean that I cannot be inspired to use that in a different way. That's my problem, is I come up with a lot of ideas and I have so many ideas just percolating, but obviously, I can't use all of them. So I would say of all the different thoughts and ideas I've come up with, I end up using maybe 20-30% of them in my work, and so I do have a drawer full of ideas that could develop into something else.
As the macabre mind behind the Saw, Insidious, and The Conjuring franchises, Wan made the jump from horror to action and has had just as much success with the latter genre. Despite continually proving himself as a financially and critically successful filmmaker, several behind-the-scenes shifts at WB saw his promising Aquaman spinoff canceled. While The Trench may have been abandoned, Wan could still rework some of those "horror-tinged" concepts, which are his bread and butter, into another project. While Aquaman 2 will likely revisit the Kingdom of the Trench, Wan seems to be referring to one of his standalone horror projects, his most recent of which is Malignant.
While the DCEU has undoubtedly seen success with titles like Aquaman and Wonder Woman, Warner Bros. has often been criticized for failing to implement an overarching cohesive vision across the franchise. Canceling a promising spinoff like The Trench is one example of this and an especially curious decision given how successful Aquaman and many of Wan's projects are. While The Trench will likely never come to fruition, it will be interesting to see if Wan can incorporate its concepts into another project.
Source: ComicBook
