With less than 100 days to go until its release, Warner Bros. have finally unleashed the first trailer for Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, the direct sequel to James Wan and Jason Momoa’s 2018 hit:
Picking up in real time since the first movie, the trailer reveals Arthur Curry trying to raise his newborn son on land as his father Tom (Temuera Morrison) did, while balancing his duties as King of Atlantis. When Yahya Abdul-Mateen II’s vengeful Black Manta — now wielding a cursed Atlantean artifact known as the Black Trident — returns, attacking Tom’s lighthouse, Arthur teams up with his incarcerated half-brother, a decidedly disheveled Orm (Patrick Wilson), to stop him. Together, the pair embark on another globetrotting quest, this time to find the missing seventh kingdom, which looks decidedly haunted.
Conspicuously absent, barring one blink-and-you’ll-miss-it shot during the end, is Amber Heard as Mera, with Nicole Kidman providing all the female presence in the trailer as Arthur’s mother Atlanna. Heard stated last year that her role would be minimal, while Wan told Entertainment Weekly, “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.”
Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom will be released on December 20, and will mark the final movie in the pre-Flash DC Extended Universe, with it still being unclear if Momoa will reprise the role in James Gunn and Peter Safran’s DC Universe (which will begin properly on the big screen with 2025’s Superman: Legacy.) The movie will also see Dolph Lundgren, Randall Park, and Vincent Regan reprise their roles as Nereus, Dr. Stephen Shin, and Atlan from the first movie, plus the introduction of Jani Zhao as Stingray, Indya Moore as Karshon, and Pilou Asbæk in an undisclosed role. Wan also confirmed to EW the appearance of Aquaman’s giant seahorse Storm, and the return of Topo, the drum-playing octopus from the first film.
In further DC news today, Max released a gory first trailer for the Harley Quinn spin-off, Kite Man: Hell Yeah!, which you can watch here. The series, originally dubbed Noonan’s, follows Poison Ivy’s ex as he tries to rebuild his life, and promises to be as irreverent as its predecessor, all while continuing to feature DC mainstays like Harley and Darkseid. It will be released sometime next year.