The King of the Seven Seas and his archenemy battle in a TV spot for Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom.
The promo, which was shared in a video posted on X, begins with a shot of Black Manta without his helmet on, then later shoots energy beams from the eyes of said helmet, which is subsequently followed by Arthur Curry saying, "Holy crap." Towards the promo's end, Black Manta can be heard remarking, "I never draw this blade unless it's gonna taste blood," before he and Aquaman fight in an Arctic cave with tridents in hand. The Marine Monarch then comments that he "wouldn't have it any other way," leading into the two enemies lunging at each other as the TV spot comes to a close.
On the topic of Black Manta, returning director James Wan confirmed that The Lost Kingdom will have aspects of the character's scrapped spinoff movie, The Trench. "We had developed the Trench movie, and ultimately, like most things, you develop — if they work out, great, if they don't, then that's fine as well," he said. "We didn't want that project to potentially step on the Aquaman films, but we came up with a lot of really interesting ideas and really cool stuff that I felt we could use it in this one."
"And so with the Trench movie, it was going to be a secret Black Manta, right?" Wan continued. "Initially, we announced it as a Trench movie, but ultimately, we wanted to surprise the fans because that was going to be a stand-alone Black Manta movie. And so when that didn't happen, some of those ideas kind of found their way into this there."
Wan had also discussed Black Manta being the primary antagonist of The Lost Kingdom, stating in a Q&A that his plan with the first Aquaman movie "was always to set up a relationship with [Black Manta] and Aquaman." Wan went on to add, "[Black Manta] was kind of a glorified side character in the first one. But we knew that that was going to be okay because we knew that the second movie was where we could go with him in a much bigger role."
The Lost Kingdom Will Be a More Serious Film
Moving on to the film itself, Wan hinted in June that The Lost Kingdom would have a more serious tone. Similarly, Wan said The Lost Kingdom will have some horror elements in it back in 2020.
Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom open in theaters on Dec. 20, 2023.
Source: X