Aquaman 2 is heavily inspired by Mario Bava’s Planet of the Vampires

I know it wasn’t to everyone’s liking, but I found James Wan’s Aquaman to be a ridiculous amount of fun. With production on Aquaman 2 now underway, we will soon be returning to the underwater kingdom of Atlantis and I can only hope that Wan will be able to top what came before.

While speaking with Total Film, James Wan revealed that Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom will be heavily inspired by an unlikely source – Mario Bava’s Planet of the Vampires.

Aquaman 2 is very heavily inspired by Planet of the Vampires. You can take the boy out of the horror but you can never take the horror out of the boy.

Planet of the Vampires follows the crew of two spaceships that land on an unexplored world and find that disembodied inhabitants are possessing the bodies of their dead crew. Planet of the Vampires was bold, brightly coloured, and highly imaginative, and it’s also been speculated that it served as an inspiration for Ridley Scott’s Alien. James Wan has previously teased that Aquaman 2 would include a touch of horror. The director went on to tell Total Film that because the first Aquaman laid the foundation for the wacky underwater world, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom will be easier for audiences to accept. “Well, the first movie took a lot of people by surprise, right?” Wan said. “And that’s partially because they were not familiar with the comic book, which deals in this very lurid, strange world. People were taken aback that I didn’t throw all that stuff away and make a dark, heavy film. But I didn’t feel that would have been right for it. So with the second film, I feel it will be easier for people to accept where we go because I’ve already laid the foundation.“

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is set to hit theaters on December 16, 2022.