Filmmaker James Wan has revealed to Total Film that Mario Bava’s cult camp classic “Planet of the Vampires” serves as heavy inspiration for the upcoming “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom” movie at Warner Bros. Pictures and DC Films.
The 1965 feature by Bava follows the experiences of the crew members of two giant spaceships that have crash-landed on a forbidding, unexplored planet.
The disembodied inhabitants of the world possess the bodies of the crew who died during the crash, and use the animated corpses to stalk and kill the remaining survivors.
Wan hinted at the horrors of the underwater world in the famed Trench sequence of the first film, so the sequel exploring a darker element isn’t so surprising. He tells the outlet it required the first film’s weirdness to score the faith of audiences to explore this universe:
“Well, the first movie took a lot of people by surprise, right? 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 scheduled to be released on December 16th 2022.
Read More
Photo Credit: