‘Aquaman 2’ might not be the sinking ship everyone thinks it is

You see, one thing the sequel has in common with the first movie is that it is being tasked with following up on a notorious flop. At the time 2017’s Justice League came out, it was considered the biggest flop in the DCEU. Plagued with production issues and reshoots that gave Henry Cavill a cursed CGI upper lip, a saccharine tone from replacement director Joss Whedon punching up the look and script, and a clichéd storyline, the movie failed to impress audiences or critics.

What’s more, the superhero crossover that should’ve been DC’s answers to Marvel’s The Avengers had a much higher potential for box office revenue than what we got with its $656 million worldwide gross against a $300,000 budget, according to The Numbers. The DCEU was seemingly dead in the water.

Given this climate for the brand, you would think the very next movie to come out would be an instant flop, whether it was good or bad. However, 2018’s Aquaman ended up pulling off the seemingly impossible by making $1 billion at the worldwide box office and becoming the DCEU’s highest-grossing movie of all time, even to this day. Now, Aquaman 2 is poised in a similar situation where it has to follow up not just one but a string of flops, the most notorious of which is probably The Flash. Can the sequel pull off the same hat trick as the original and completely blow expectations out of the water?

There are a few other things working against Aquaman 2‘s potential box office success, such as it being the last movie in the DCEU before James Gunn’s rebooted DC Universe launches with 2025’s Superman Legacy. Aquaman 2 also has the shortest promotional window of any DCEU movie thus far and we still haven’t even seen a trailer for the film that is slated to come out in December. The Jason Momoa-starring sequel has also been subjected to three different reshoots. Two labor strikes happening in Hollywood right now, with the Writers Guild of America and Screen Actors Guild, may also hurt its prospects.

Going back to the first film from 2018, its success seemed especially unlikely when you consider the lack of recognizability with the general public for a superhero who can talk to fish. Aquaman just doesn’t have the same household-name quality as Batman or Superman, and yet, the King of Atlantis pulled in more ticket sales at the theaters than those two did with their shared movie helmed by Zack Snyder from 2016.

One of the reasons for this could be the mass appeal of its star, Momoa, rather than the character he was portraying. He’s just one of those movie stars who seems to enhance the box office prospects of every role he is in these days, similar to Dwayne Johnson (setting aside the unmitigated flop that was Black Adam). We suspect half of the movie-going public that brought Aquaman to $1 billion in the first place weren’t DCEU die-hards, but Momoa fanatics who knew him from his role in Game of Thrones and other hits. The actor’s star has only been rising ever higher, with Momoa’s role as the villain in the recent Fast X being a high point of the film for many.

While it is true that we haven’t seen so much as a solo teaser for Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, The Little Mermaid‘s release proves a truncated promotional window doesn’t necessarily guarantee a movie will bomb at the box office. In the Disney musical remake’s case, The Little Mermaid at the very least broke even. And though that doesn’t sound like a high bar to reach, merely breaking even is an achievement for any DCEU movie nowadays since it can be argued that at least the last six films to come out in the franchise have all flopped.

Will the King of Atlantis retain his throne at the top of the box office or sink to the bottom of the ocean? We’ll all collectively find out when Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom makes landfall in theaters on Dec. 20.