QUICK! WHEN you hear “Aquaman,” what comes to mind? If you’ve been to the movies in the last decade or so, it’s probably not the classic white dude with an orange shirt, green pants, and blonde hair. No—most likely, when you hear “Aquaman,” you picture the unmistakable beard and long locks of Mr. Jason Momoa, who made his debut as the Arthur Curry version of Aquaman in 2016’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and hasn’t looked back since. Included in his appearances since then? Just 2018’s Aquaman, which went on to gross more than a billion dollars at the box office. That wasn’t always a sure thing; this version of Aquaman had doubters, including, we now know, Aquaman himself.
“Well, to be perfectly honest, I was absolutely baffled that Aquaman was received so well,” Momoa says in Men’s Health‘s May/June cover story. “I’ve done things that are amazing that no one sees and no one gives a shit about. You just don’t know in this business.”
He continues: “I don’t go do things and think, Oh, I’m gonna get $1 billion on this one. I go in and do my best job.”
Perhaps his incredulous attitude comes from the fact that before Aquaman, his outings as the character came with a little less fanfare; he only had a small cameo in Batman v Superman (which scored a 29% from critics on Rotten Tomatoes), but the movie in which he made his true debut as the character, the 2017 Joss Whedon-finished cut of Justice League, was also poorly received, with a 39% from critics on Rotten Tomatoes.
Aquaman, the next year, bumped that number up to a 65% from critics and earned boatloads of money at the box office ($1.15 billion, to be precise) in the process.
The sequel to Aquaman—titled Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom—is scheduled to arrive this December, five years after the release of the oceanic superhero’s original debut outing. But with major upheaval happening at DC Studios (filmmaker James Gunn and his longtime producing partner Peter Safran have taken over as co-CEOs and architects of a new interconnected DC Universe), it’s reasonable to wonder if (and how) Arthur Curry’s underwater heroics will continue—or if there may be something else in Momoa’s future.
Momoa has expressed interest in playing another DC Comics character—the anti-hero bounty hunter Lobo—and the internet’s rumor mill has only added flames to that fire in recent months. The 43-year-old star is playing it close to the vest, but also not shooting anything down; all he told Men’s Health about the future beyond the (already-completed) Aquaman sequel is that he’s “extremely, extremely excited” about his DCU future, and that “there’s a lot of badass shit coming up.”
While Safran is sure to say that “there are few superhero castings that are more perfect than Momoa as Aquaman,” he also doesn’t explicitly rule out the possibility of Momoa switching characters as DC enters its next era.
“I look forward to working with Jason for many years to come,” Safran, who previously stated that Momoa will only ever play one character for DC at a time, says. “I would be happy for it to be in Arthur Curry’s world, but if/when another opportunity came up, I’d find another great character for him to create.”
Sounds like Momoa trading in his trident for a cigar in the near future may not be so far-fetched after all.
Evan is the culture editor for Men’s Health, with bylines in The New York Times, MTV News, Brooklyn Magazine, and VICE. He loves weird movies, watches too much TV, and listens to music more often than he doesn’t.
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