When James Wan stated that Aquaman would be the "Wolverine" of the
Justice League, some people (non-comic book fans) were confused and thought Wan was stating that the character would become the leader and focus of the film like Hugh Jackman's character in the 20th Century Fox franchise. Wan has quickly used Twitter to explain that's not what he meant.
As you can see, Wan isn't ready to confirm Black Manta just yet, but when there's no immediate denial from a director/studio that usually means the rumor is true. With yesterday's report, fans are already casting Aquaman's arch-nemesis and Michael K. Williams seems to be the favorite. He definitely looks the part and apparently is interested.
Below, we have an i
nterview from IGN with Wan where the director explains how he plans to tackle underwater communication in the film. We posted an
earlier version of this interview but it now appears that IGN has updated their article to include more detailed responses from The Conjuring 2 director. Could they actually use literal "speech bubbles?" Probably not.
"Yeah, speech bubbles, right?! Maybe it'll be speech bubbles. [Laughs] I never thought about that... Words come out of the bubbles. It's brilliant! That's a cool visual."
"It would be very literal, yeah! No, here's the thing I always say, if you have water in your lungs, like these characters do, there's no air bubble. So I don't know... I just think in my movie, I want to kind of create... I love the idea of underwater speaking but with a real sort of sonic, aquatic quality to it. So there's this sort of aquatic, almost sonar/whale thing. Even though it's in a human language, there’s this slight sort of underlay to it, this ping to it, which I think would be interesting for us to design from a sound design perspective. Yeah, it will be fun. Also, Zack has some ideas that he'll be doing in Justice League."
"Listen, I'll be honest, in some ways, JL will be an experiment for me to see what works and what may not work as well. And then kind of go, okay... Here’s the great thing, with all these superhero movies, you watch from one movie to another, and they always sort of slightly change things along the way. You kind of have to do that to make what's best for your film."
Were you hoping Aquman's first solo feature film would use Ocean Master as the primary antagonist or are you fine with the rumored choice of Black Manta? Is Michael K. Williams your pick to play the latter? Let us known in the comment section below. Arthur Curry will next be seen in Justice League before starring in his own standalone feature in 2019.