We’re still mourning the loss of The Trench, James Wan‘s horror spin-off of Aquaman that would’ve centered on the ocean-dwelling monsters from the Mariana Trench. Wan recently revealed on Instagram another reason to lament the spin-off’s termination back in April; The Trench was a covert Black Manta movie.
“I’ll let you in on a secret, the canceled Trench spin-off movie was really going to be a secret Black Manta movie,” Wan wrote in an Instagram comment on a post of Black Manta’s helmet in the upcoming Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom.
If there’s a silver lining to this news, it’s that Yahya Abdul-Mateen II will be back as Black Manta for Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom and that Wan never strays too far from horror. Wan is returning to direct the sequel for Warner Bros. and DC, and he revealed in April that the upcoming sequel draws heavily from Mario Bava’s Planet of the Vampires. The first glimpse of Black Manta’s look in the sequel makes that influence clear.
Wan told Total Film, “You can take the boy out of horror but you can never take the horror out the boy.”
“Well, the first movie took a lot of people by surprise, right? And that’s partially because they were not familiar with the comic book, which deals in this very lurid, strange world,” Wan also notes. “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.”
Released in 1965, Planet of the Vampires was directed by the legendary Mario Bava, and Wan is in good company taking inspiration from the film. After all, Planet of the Vampires is often cited as a heavy influence on Ridley Scott’s sci-fi/horror classic, Alien.
Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is currently slated to release on December 16, 2022.