It has become fairly obvious that things are in a state of flux within Warner Brothers’ DC Comics Expanded Universe film franchise. The Flash has been foundering for six months now, looking for a new director. Questions abound as to when their proposed Batman film will get in front of cameras. And the studio has announced a number of other installments – from a Suicide Squad sequel to a Batgirl film to the Harley Quinn-led female villains movie Gotham City Sirens – without indicating a clear idea as to when any of them may actually get on the screen. Rumors have been circulating about the amount and severity of alleged reshoots for next November’s Justice League, though I tend to suspect that they are overstating the situation somewhat.
On the plus side though, early, pre-review embargo buzz on next month’s Wonder Woman seems to be strong. And there are other rumors that persist that with DC Comics Chief Creative Officer Geoff Johns being appointed to co-run the franchise with Jon Berg, there has been a loosening up freedoms for filmmakers working on their various projects. If so, we received confirmation of that with a tweet from Aquaman director James Wan today.
The director of the upcoming comic book adaptation tweeted out this picture of Amber Heard, who will be playing love interest Mera to Jason Momoa’s titular underwater superhero.
You’ll note that the picture from Wan showcases an appearance for the character than what we know she’ll be looking like when she shows up in Justice League later this year. (See picture below.) Yes, that’s right. She has a lot more color to her look than the washed out blue-gray patina that Justice League director Zack Snyder has been painting all of his DCEU films with. Granted, this is a photo directly from the set and it is possible that somewhere along the post-production lie the film could get color corrected down to muted palette we’ve come to expect from these films. On the other hand, this could be a sign that Warner Brothers are indeed letting its directors bring more of their own visual flair to the individual films that they are working on.
And that is a a good thing.
Aquaman also stars Willem Dafoe, Temuera Morrison, Dolph Lundgren, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Patrick Wilson and Nicole Kidman. It opens December 21, 2018.
