James Wan contradicts Amber Heard’s “Aquaman 2” allegations
‘Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom’ director James Wan weighs in on Amber Heard’s limited role in the upcoming DC superhero film.
Last year, Heard said – as part of her testimony during her trial against her former partner Johnny Depp – that her role in the 2018 sequel to “Aquaman” had been “very reduced”.
“I was given a script and then new versions of the script that had scenes of action removed that showed my character and another character, without giving away any spoilers, two characters fighting each other and they basically have one A lot of my role,” Heard said during the process. “They just took out a bunch.”
Heard testified during the trial that she almost lost her role in “Aquaman” due to the media storm surrounding her legal battles with Depp. But a former Warner Bros. Pictures executive said she was almost recast not because of the Depp controversy, but because she lacked on-screen “chemistry” with star Jason Momoa.
Now Wan insists that it was always the plan that the latest water-based action film would focus on Momoa’s Arthur Curry and Patrick Wilson’s Orm Marius, with Heard’s Mera naturally taking on a smaller role.
“I told everyone about it from the beginning. “The first Aquaman was Arthur and Mera’s journey,” Wan said Weekly entertainment. “The second film was always going to be Arthur and Orm. So the first one was a romance action adventure film, the second one was a bromance action adventure film. We’ll leave it at that.”
After a six-week trial, a jury found in June 2022 that Heard defamed her former husband in a Washington Post opinion article and acted maliciously by calling him a domestic abuser. Depp said it cost him millions of dollars and leading roles after decades as an A-list actor.
The jury awarded him $10 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages. The latter was immediately reduced by the judge to meet Virginia’s legal cap of $350,000.
Heard also received a $2 million defamation verdict after one of Depp’s lawyers accused her of staging a scene in which she vandalized an apartment and spilled wine to promote “Pirates of the Caribbean.” Making actors look violent.
The two finally settled their defamation case in December.
In one (n Instagram In a post about the settlement, Heard wrote: “After much consideration, I have made a very difficult decision to settle the defamation case my ex-husband brought against me in Virginia. It’s important for me to say that I never chose this. I defended my truth and in the process my life as I knew it was destroyed.”
Times staffs Christi Carras and Richard Winton contributed to this report.
