James Wan Addresses Rumors of Amber Heard's "Reduced" Role in 'Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom'

For the first time ever, director James Wan publicly responded to the rumors surrounding Amber Heard's role as Mera in the upcoming Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom.

In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, the filmmaker clarified that his intention for the sequel was always to focus on the brotherhood between Jason Momoa's Arthur and Patrick Wilson's Orm, rather than Arthur and his love interest, Mera. "I always pitched this to everyone from the get-go. The first Aquaman was Arthur and Mera's journey. The second movie was always going to be Arthur and Orm," Wan explained. "So, the first was a romance action-adventure movie, the second one is a bromance action-adventure movie. We'll leave it at that."

Heard's role and its significance in the sequel became a topic of debate during her widely-publicized defamation trial against her ex-husband, Johnny Depp. There were rumors of the studio planning to recast Mera's character and that all the scenes with Heard were deleted, but these were debunked when the film's first trailer dropped at CinemaCon 2023. During the trial, entertainment industry Kathryn Arnold testified that Heard's role was allegedly cut down by placing Mera in the hospital and stopping the character from participating in any major sequences. “They had her in the hospital very shortly in the first part of the movie called Act One. They had her in the hospital and they pretty much had her in the hospital and then she was going to do this action sequence in the end," Arnold stated. "I believe that in the first act of the movie, she was injured somehow…or has something to do with the baby.”

Aquaman and the Long Kingdom premieres December 20.

Elsewhere in entertainment, watch the latest trailer for Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon.