While Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is still more than a year away, DC fans can look forward to another James Wan-produced Aquaman project in the near future. Aquaman: King of Atlantis is hitting HBO Max soon, and IGN can exclusively debut the first four minutes of the series premiere.
Check out the video player above or the embed below to see this wacky Aquaman clip, and then read on to see what producers Victor Courtright and Marly Halpern-Graser had to say about this very off-the-wall take on the Aquaman franchise.
Aquaman's Delicate Balancing Act
It's easy to forget in this post-Justice League world, but there was a time before Jason Momoa's burly, brooding, hard-drinking version of Aquaman was the norm. In fact, Aquaman used to be among DC's most widely mocked heroes, thanks in no small part to his portrayal the various Super Friends animated series.
Courtright and Halpern-Graser explained that even though this is a very comedic series, the goal was to find a happy medium between the cool DCEU Aquaman and the more traditional versions of Arthur Curry. The show's Aquaman may look like the DCEU's, but this is a king still struggling to be taken seriously by his own subjects.
"Because you can't ignore that aspect of Aquaman's history, we tried to take the cooler, more grounded Aquaman that is becoming the way people think of him and just put him in a sort of goofy sort of cartoony world and have him bristle at that a little bit," Halpern-Graser told IGN. "Because he's sort of a serious guy, and he doesn't totally love how silly the world around him is. And he's a little bit the audience's point of view."
Halpern-Graser added, "On one hand, we didn't want to be insecure about Aquaman, because we think he is cool. And we don't think we need to be defensive about that, because I love that character and I love all the stuff that makes him cool. But we did make him a little bit insecure about it."
The show's off-kilter tone is also designed to make it more all-ages friendly, certainly more so than HBO Max exclusives like Titans, Doom Patrol and Young Justice.
"I think this show has a really good range," said Courtright. "I think the main character has a little bit more mature perspective, but he's in this extremely fun, colorful world, so that kind of juxtaposition is… I hope it gets younger audiences super excited about it, but then also there's enough to ground it for older audiences."
Courtright and Halpern-Graser also spearheaded Cartoon Network's ThunderCats Roar, another quirky, comedic update to an iconic superhero franchise. While the exaggerated animation style of King of Atlantis hearkens back to both ThunderCats Roar and shows like Adventure Time, the duo revealed the series is inspired by a pretty wide variety of projects.
What King of Atlantis Borrows From the DCEU
However different the series may be tonally, it does borrow many story trappings from the 2018 movie. As the clip above shows, King of Atlantis could almost be taken as a continuation of the film, given that it's set shortly after Aquaman (Cooper Andrews) has claimed the Atlantean throne from Ocean Master (Dana Snyder) and entered into a relationship with Mera (Gillian Jacobs). Courtright and Halpern-Graser made it clear that was the goal – to create a series that would be as approachable as possible for fans who mainly know Aquaman from the DCEU films.
"Our idea with our series was to take the foundation that was built by that movie and use that to build off of," said Halpern-Graser. "Because what we basically did is any elements from the movie or characters – the idea that Mera and Vulko helped Aquaman overthrow Ocean Master, and he's king now, and that just happened yesterday – basically, we were able to say that generally, that the events of the movie, something like that happened in our world too. And now we get to go from there, which means we don't have to re-explain that stuff. We don't have to set that stuff up… You've seen the movie, you basically know this dynamic, and now we're going to introduce all these new, crazy things that we get to do, because we don't have to reintroduce the basic characters and the basic status quo, which was a huge strength. And I'm really glad we were able to do that."
The series also takes its cues from the movies in terms of Aquaman's physical appearance. This character design is clearly drawing from Momoa's version, and the producers even made a point of casting The Walking Dead star Cooper Andrews (an actor of Samoan and Hungarian Jewish descent) as Arthur Curry.
"I think we always knew that it was going to be based on the movie enough that it would feel wrong to do a blonde-haired, blue-eyed Aquaman. And even though it is its own thing, and we are doing our own continuity, that did feel like something that was important to stick to," said Halpern-Graser. "Cooper's just amazing. I really can't even imagine doing this show with anybody else. He just hits that tone of like sort of put upon, disgruntled sort of everyman so amazingly. But that definitely were discussions that we had. And it was something that was always pretty important to me and Victor."
As mentioned earlier, Wan himself is another link between the animated series and the film. Wan directed both the 2018 original and its upcoming sequel, and he produced the series through his company Atomic Monster Productions. Halpern-Graser made it clear Wan and his team were heavily involved with the series throughout its development, including offering some crucial input regarding Aquaman's portrayal.
"I think the biggest place where they were a huge help was when we were figuring out Aquaman's character and his point of view," said Halpern-Graser. "Because our series is about Aquaman wanting to be a good king and wanting his subjects to like him and to think that he's doing a good job, he basically does want the approval of the kingdom of Atlantis. And I think there's a version of that, that could come off as sort of whiny and entitled. And we didn't want that."
Aquaman: King of Atlantis will be released as three 45-minute specials on HBO Max. "Chapter One: Dead Sea" premieres Thursday, Oct. 14, followed by “Chapter Two: Primordeus” on Thursday, Oct. 21 and “Chapter Three: Tidal Shift” on Thursday, Oct. 28. The series will also air on Cartoon Network's ACME Night block.
Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.