The writing’s on the wall for Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. With Jason Momoa talking about never reprising the role and lackluster marketing leading to box office estimates looking to be DC’s worst of the year, it’s shocking they released this movie. It’s so bad Warner Bros. has put an embargo on reviewing the movie until it comes out, which is nearly unheard of for blockbuster films.
Aquaman as a franchise has suffered setbacks on several levels. With DC announcing James Gunn rebooting the universe and none of the current films in production being in continuity, there seems little point for fans to invest in these iterations of the characters. In addition, the toxic nature of Amber Heard’s involvement in the film has left potential viewers sour.
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Warner Bros. did their best for Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom to mitigate Head’s involvement, mostly by doing little marketing. What they had in terms of promotion didn’t feature Heard, leading to talk that she was cut out of the film entirely. Heard claimed Jason Momoa mocked her and was drunk on set dressing as Johnny Depp, implying the star of the film hated involvement with her as much as the fans don’t want to see her on screen.
With Warner Bros. putting so little into film marketing, one would expect reviews and word of mouth to be the only way they’d make money. Having an embargo means the company doesn’t have faith in the film whatsoever. Otherwise, they would want to generate early high scores and anticipation.
Aquaman marks one of the few review embargos we’ve seen on this scale of a movie. Others also had warning signs as to their poor quality when they were done, including X:Men Dark Phoenix and Geostorm.
LawTube expert ThatUmbrellaGuy, famous for covering the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard trial extensively, has a theory about why the embargo exists, and it sounds like a cynical marketing tactic from Warner Bros.
“Aquaman 2 review embargo ends at the SAME TIME it pops into theaters,” ThatUmbrellaGuy posted to X. “I think Warner wants to hide the Amber Heard news as long as possible, possibly hoping to trick audiences. I REALLY hope their ‘removing Mera’ was an advertising stunt, because that’ll be a DISASTER.”
He continued in another tweet, “Obviously we know she’s in the movie, but the question was “how long?” Warner spent the last few months trying to say to the world ‘not very.’ If that marketing was a lie, woe be it, because that’ll be a mess.”
If he’s right about this, fans will be outraged when they see Heard on the screen as a significant role for Aquaman, and it will be a massive PPR disaster for Warner Bros.
With the movie only tracking $35-40 million for its opening weekend box office, Aquaman is on track to be a disaster for Warner Bros. The film’s content might further embarrass DC movies, which are already struggling with their brands.
It’s been so bad for DC in general that Warner Bros. that David Zaslav scrapped a Batgirl film entirely last year, not allowing it to see the light of day even after substantive funds were spent on the production. If Aquaman is similar in its money-losing probability, it’s hard not to wonder why Zaslav wouldn’t protect Warner Bros. from Amber Heard’s impact on their brand and do similar.
What do you think of Amber Heard having too big a role in Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom? Is Warner Bros. hiding it? Leave a comment and let us know.
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All DC movies are in the “all your movies suck, change my mind” mode. I no longer view a DC film until I have evidence to the contrary.