How Zack Snyder Helped Save ‘Aquaman’

Aquaman is riding high as the highest grossing film in the DCEU, with over a billion dollars in the box office bank. While that is impressive on its own, it’s even more so when you realize that Justice League, the film that brought Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Flash, and Cyborg together only took in a little over 600 million dollars. The blame for Justice League’s disappointing numbers fell heavily on the head of DCEU architect, Zack Snyder. In fact, Joss Whedon was brought in to try and save the film from what the studio feared would be disastrous results. Now we are learning that Whedon’s approach to Aquaman could have completely derailed his solo film and the reason it came out good was largely because of Snyder.

In a new podcast, actor Neil Daly claiming that Aquaman director James Wan went behind the back of Warner Bros execs to get Snyder’s input on the progress of the film and the way the character should be handled. The result was an Aquaman that was markedly different than the one we met in Justice League… and that was for the better.

“We could have gotten a whole movie about Aquaman basically fawning over Mera the whole time and making all kinds of dirty jokes and things like that and they really had to get away from that, which is all what Whedon had done, so Snyder had a little bit of an influence on Aquaman. James Wan was showing Zack Snyder – against the studio’s wishes – cuts of the movie and early test screenings and storyboards to make sure that they’re on the same page with what he originally wanted and Snyder gave his blessing of approval, bringing it back to what he wanted all along.”