While Aquaman may be a superhero movie first and foremost, that didn't stop director James Wan from instilling his own brand of horror into the film, especially in the chilling and breathtaking scene when Aquaman and Mera fought off the voracious creatures from the Trench, who are now the subject of a new spinoff movie that's in development at Warner Bros.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Noah Gardner and Aidan Fitzgerald have been hired to write a "horror-tinged" screenplay for a movie focused on the creatures from the Trench.
As viewers of Aquaman and readers of DC Comics (where the monsters first appeared in 2011) know, the amphibious creatures of the Trench were once residents of Atlantis, but became trapped and isolated when the city sunk into the sea, their genetic lines mutating over generations into the sharp-toothed creatures that attack Aquaman and Mera in the 2018 film.
Titled The Trench, the Aquaman spinoff will be produced by James Wan and Peter Safran. Specific plot details are mostly being kept under the surface at this time, but the new movie is expected to "be set in the kingdom of the Trench," with the core cast of Aquaman not expected to star in the project.
With Aquaman bringing in more than $1 billion at the global box office, it seems that Warner Bros. is understandably eager to expand the watery world of the film, and while we wait for an Aquaman sequel, The Trench could be the movie to whet viewers' appetites for more underwater adventures (or, in this case, horror stories at sea).
Former assistants at Bad Robot, Noah Gardner and Aidan Fitzgerald are relatively new to the screenwriting scene, but according to THR, they did pen a submarine thriller called The Volos, so they may feel right at home writing the submerged story for The Trench.
This could be James Wan's first step in creating an Aquaman-verse similar to The Conjuring cinematic universe that now includes Annabelle, The Nun, and the upcoming Crooked Man. Time will tell what dark, creepy corners of the Trench will be explored if the movie makes it to the big screen, and we'll be sure to keep Daily Dead readers updated on any news that comes out of the depths of The Trench.
[Image Credit: Above image from THR via Warner Bros. Pictures.]