With Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom set to arrive in theaters later this year, director James Wan has addressed Amber Heard‘s claim that the actress had her role of Mera diminished in the sequel because of Johnny Depp’s alleged harassment campaign against her.
During a courtroom appearance in the couple’s highly-publicized defamation trial, Heard testified that her role in Aquaman 2 became a “very pared-down version” than what was presented in the original script. The actress is reportedly only in the film for 10 minutes.
“I was given a script and then given new versions of the script that had taken away scenes that had action in it, that depicted my character and another character, without giving any spoiler aways, two characters fighting with one another, and they basically took a bunch out of my role,” Heard said. “They just removed a bunch out.”
While Wan didn’t specifically address the alleged edits to Heard’s screen time, the director explained to Entertainment Weekly that the sequel was always going to focus more on Jason Momoa‘s Arthur and his brother Orm played by Patrick Wilson:
“I always pitched this to everyone from the get-go,” Wan tells EW. “The first Aquaman was Arthur and Mera’s journey. The second movie was always going to be Arthur and Orm. So, the first was a romance action-adventure movie, the second one is a bromance action-adventure movie. We’ll leave it at that.”
In the Aquaman‘s sequel defense, Heard isn’t the only one who saw her screen time altered. The film was originally supposed to feature an appearance from Michael Keaton’s Batman. After some juggling of release schedules with The Flash, a decision was made to feature Ben Affleck’s Batman instead. Now, the film reportedly features zero Batmen, but with the way things are constantly changing at DC Studios, don’t quote us on that.
Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom dives into theaters on December 20.
(Via Entertainment Weekly)
