It appears Warner Bros. will continue to ride the Aquaman wave with a "horror-tinged" spinoff.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, the studio is developing a movie centered on the Trench—a group of deep sea dwellers who were featured in the original 2018 film. Warner Bros. has tapped Noah Gardner and Aidan Fitzgerald to pen the script, while Peter Safran and Aquaman director James Wan have signed on as producers.
According to DC Comics, the Trench were introduced in 2011's AQUAMAN #1. The creatures "used to be normal, human-looking Atlantean citizens" but evolved into horrifying, animalistic beings falling into the deepest parts of the sea.
Though there are very few details about the spinoff, THR reports the film is expected to recieve a much smaller budget than the standard DC superhero flick. The outlet also reports that the Trench will not feature anyone from the main cast of Aquaman, such as Jason Momoa, Amber Heard as Mera, Patrick Wilson, or Willem Dafoe.
Since its release in late 2018, Aquaman has become the highest-grossing DC film ever. The movie has racked in more than $1 billion at the global box office, and is now the 22nd highest worldwide grosser of all time. The record-breaking success has led many to believe that an Aquaman sequel was inevitable; however, Warner Bros. has yet to confirm a second installment. Wan spoke about the possibility of an Aquaman 2 back in December; though he didn't dismiss the idea, his comments didn't exactly spark excitement.
"I felt like Aquaman ticked a lot of boxes for me. I want to do another action movie after Furious 7, I wanted to do a world creation film, and I wanted to do a superhero movie, and Aquaman literally ticked all of those boxes for me," he told Comicbook.com. "And so right now, I'm in that sort of place of like do I kind of go back and do a smaller movie maybe as my next one, something a bit more intimate. Or if I can do a personal movie, but maybe it's on a bigger scale. I'm not sure at this point."
