According to Variety, Aquaman star Amber Heard is making a claim that Warner Bros. wanted to exclude her in the upcoming Aquaman and The Lost Kingdom due to the fallout of her divorce from Johnny Depp.
Heard, who plays Mera in the DC and Warner Bros. films, claims that the studio “didn’t want to include me” and that she was “actively scheduling timing for filming” for the Aquaman sequel but that all stopped after her ex-husband’s team said she lied about her abuse claims against him. Heard added that all “communications” about Aquaman 2 “stopped at that point.” She made these claims during the ongoing defamation trial against Johnny Depp.
The actor has also claimed that she had to “fight really hard” to keep her career. “I had to fight really hard to keep my career after I got my [restraining order against Depp],” Heard testified. “I lost opportunities. I got dropped from jobs and campaigns. I fought to keep my job and the biggest movie opportunity I had to date [with] Justice League with the option to [star in] Aquaman. I had to fight really hard to stay in Justice League because that was the time of the divorce.”
Amber Heard has “a three-picture option.” In the first Aquaman film, she had more of a co-lead role opposite Jason Momoa. That film earned her $1 million. She would earn twice as much for Aquaman and The Lost Kingdom, which is the third film in her contract, but Heard also said that her role in the upcoming DC film was “a very pared-down version.”
“I was given a script and then given new versions of the script that had taken away scenes that had action in it, that depicted my character and another character, without giving any spoiler aways, two characters fighting with one another, and they basically took a bunch out of my role,” Heard said. “They just removed a bunch out.”
It’s been reported that Heard will only appear in about 10 minutes of Aquaman 2. Director James Wan (The Conjuring, The Conjuring 2, Malignant) returned to direct the sequel after earning solid reviews for the first Aquaman film which was released back in 2018. The DC Comics film stars Jason Momoa, Amber Heard, Willem Dafoe, Patrick Wilson, Dolph Lundgren, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Temuera Morrison and Nicole Kidman.
Aquaman and The Lost Kingdom is set to release in theaters on March 17, 2023.
