Can Warner Bros. just put out a normal DC superhero movie?

It turns out that sunsetting a cinematic universe isn’t as easy as it sounds. Now spanning three Warner Bros. regimes, Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom is currently underwater as the production just wrapped an unprecedented third round of reshoots, writes The Hollywood Reporter. The final film in the Snyderverse, set to dive into theaters in December 2023, is the latest headache for James Gunn, Peter Safran, and David Zaslav, who have spent the last year attempting to smother and reboot the DC universe quietly. It’s not going well.

Director James Wan has dealt with a multiverse of mandates, release dates, and buyouts in the time since his first Aquaman became an unlikely billion-dollar grosser in 2018. Since the summer of 2022, though, the Aquaman sequel underwent two rounds of reshoots and held several dismal test screenings. During that time, the jockeying of Aquaman’s all-important Batman cameo was also in the air. Former DC Films president Walter Hamada originally wanted Michael Keaton’s Batman to serve as a Nick Fury-esque link between movies. This is why Keaton appeared in The Flash, the now-canceled and unfinished Batgirl, and was pegged for Aquaman 2. However, because of Aquaman’s release date shuffle (the movie was supposed to open in March 2023), Keaton’s schedule couldn’t allot time for the film. So they brought in one of their many other Batmen, Ben Affleck, to fill in. When Aquaman jumped to December 2023, it screwed up Affleck’s appearance in The Flash because all these movies interlock and have to follow a strict timeline. As it stands, though, neither Affleck nor Keaton appears in the movie because Gunn and Safran “do not want to promise a movie universe that will not come to fruition, nor tie it down excessively to past failures,” writes The Hollywood Reporter. Considering the previous paragraph, we have to say that this is probably the right choice.

Apparently, the movie is “back on track,” with Wan recently completing five days of reshoots in four days. But, of course, this latest report is a far cry from what Wan said in June.

“I’ve had to make adjustments all along the way. The DCU has been through lots of different versions, and one of the things that was challenging about this film was keeping track of what’s going on,” Wan told The Hollywood Reporter in June. “Fortunately, the Aquaman universe is pretty far removed from the rest of the world. We’re going to many different underwater kingdoms that are not necessarily related to what’s happening with the other movies and characters, so we’re stand-alone in that respect. So I can just tell my story on its own without being affected too much, but at the same time, I have to be mindful of what’s been happening.”

However, like all DC movies, this one costs a fortune, with a reported budget of $205 million. Not to mention the tidal wave of projects going in and out of the few visual effects houses not being pilloried by Marvel’s pixel-obsessed requests.

There was a time when Warner Bros. and DC were the only ones making superhero movies. The success of Richard Donner’s Superman and Tim Burton’s Batman made mincemeat of Marvel, which spent the ’90s floundering in bankruptcy, even as sequels to Superman and Batman proved difficult. After Fox released X-Men in 2000, the landscape changed. DC responded with its bold Dark Knight trilogy, staving off the MCU until 2012 when The Avengers announced a new game in town. The next decade saw DC trying to differentiate itself through the darker-than-dark Zack Snyder films and their spin-offs. Movies like Batman V. Superman: Dawn Of Justice made money but were critically reviled and alienating to all but the most loyal Snyder fans.

Now, as Warner Bros. attempts to distance itself from the last decade of movies it made, the studio is finding it difficult to finish its leftovers. Through their many Infinite Crisises, DC Comics were much better at rebooting and transitioning to a new story arc than the DC movies. As Warner Bros. moves from AT&T to the Zaslav era, the leftover Snyderverse movies released in the transition—Black Adam, Shazam: Fury Of The Gods, and The Flash—have been one fiasco after the next. What once seemed like a sure bet, Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom isn’t making it any easier.