On the HBO TV show Entourage, an Aquaman film became a running joke. Well, it’s no joke now, as production began on the film yesterday.
Director James Wan posted the following to Twitter:
Months of intensive prep have led to this. Here we go. #DayOne #Ahab pic.twitter.com/Ryhl3NUtRY
— James Wan (@creepypuppet) May 3, 2017
So, yes, ladies an gentlemen, if you live in Australia and the film “Ahab” is shooting near you, it’s really Aquaman. Kind of defeats the purpose of name the film something else if you are going to reveal the fake name to the world, doesn’t it?
Rumors of a possible Aquaman film started as far back as 2001, when producer Bill Gerber shot down a rumor that Kiefer Sutherland and Monica Potter would be starring in an Aquaman film. Gerber announced that there was a film in the works, but it was nowhere near the casting stage.
The project then apparently moved on to Sunrise Entertainment in 2004 with novice writer Ben Grant writing the screenplay and Dwayne Johnson rumored to star, but nothing came of that either.
In the meantime, the character got more attention from television. The character appeared on Smallville in 2005, which led to a quasi-spin-off pilot being made in 2006. The pilot wasn’t picked up.
Around the same time, Aquaman became a major plot point for the second and third seasons of Entourage. Vince is cast as Aquaman in a big budget film directed by James Cameron. The fake film becomes the film with the highest weekend grosses, a fiction that Warners certainly hopes becomes a reality.
The current film version started its development in 2013. In August of 2014, news of Warners commissioning two scripts by Gangster Squad‘s Will Beall and 300: Rise of an Empire‘s Kurt Johnstad that would be put in competition with one another. In April of 2015, the number of scripts increased to five, with Jeff Nichols being added to the list of writers.
It appeared that Johnstad’s script had won, as it was his name that was mentioned when Warners announced that James Wan had signed on as director in June of 2015. But just five months later, David Leslie Johnson was announced as a new scribe for the film. The screenwriter carousel came to a stop in July in 2016 when news broke of all story development being scrapped and Will Beall coming back to construct a new script from an outline by Geoff Johns.
It is also worth mentioning that the film’s release date moved from July 27, 2018 to October 5, 2018 to its current release date of December 21, 2018. The fact that production has begun means that, barring any unforeseen problems, the film will reach that date.
The film stars Jason Momoa, Amber Heard, Willem Defoe, Patrick Wilson and Nicole Kidman.
