Amber Heard was almost removed from Aquaman 2 before Jason Momoa and director James Wan fought to keep her active.
During Johnny Depp’s high-profile defamation case, entertainment consultant Katherine Arnold (via The Wrap) stated that Heard was almost expelled from the Aquaman sequel due to the negative publicity surrounding the case.
“In February 2021, there were conversations that Amber, I’m going to be a technician with you, her job choice wasn’t going to be exercised. So maybe they haven’t rehired her,” Arnold said. “Her management team struggled a lot and eventually ended up hiring her, but not only because of what her management did, but also because star Jason Momoa and director James Wan committed to her.”
Heard previously claimed that his role as Aquaman 2 was “removed” after his breakup with Johnny Depp.
According to Arnold, Warner Bros. was willing to fire Heard from the next sequel to remove any negative publicity associated with the ongoing case.
However, Warner Bros. boss Walter Hamada said that’s not the case.
“They didn’t have much chemistry together,” Hamada told The Hollywood Reporter. “The reality is that it’s not uncommon in movies for two tracks not to have chemistry and it’s a kind of magic and film publishing: the ability to combine performances with the magic of a great score and how you put the pieces together , you can make this chemical. ”
Hamada claims that this lack of chemistry is what led Warner Bros. to consider starting Heard.
“At the end of the day, when you watch the movie, it looks like they have great chemistry,” he explained. “But I just know that during the post-production course, it took a lot of effort to get there. Sometimes you just put characters together on the screen and they work. It’s like what makes a movie star a movie star. You know when you see it, the chemistry wasn’t there … It was more difficult because of the lack of chemistry between the two. “
When asked directly if Heard’s role was “shrinking,” Hamada confirmed no.
Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom: the entire cast of the upcoming film DCEU (so far)
He explained that the next sequel was always conceived as a “comedy of friends” between Aquaman and his half-brother, King Orm, played by Patrick Wilson. And so it had been “from the earliest stages of development.”
Aquaman 2 stars Jason Momoa as the DC submarine superhero alongside Amber Heard, Nicole Kidman, Patrick Wilson, Temuera Morrison, Dolph Lundgren and Jani Zhao.
James Wan directed the screenplay based on a screenplay by David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick.
Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic at IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.