‘Aquaman’ Director James Wan Doesn’t Want to Steer the DC Universe

In less than a week, fans will finally get to see the first DC Comics movie of 2018 when Aquaman premieres in theaters.

The first followup to Justice League, there are a lot of expectations riding high on Jason Momoa’s solo film, but early audience reactions to the movie are skewing positive. The future of the DC cinematic universe might be trending in the right direction thanks to James Wan‘s directing.

But what is Warner Bros. planning for the future after the Wonder Woman sequel, as well as Shazam! and Birds of Prey? Wan addressed the franchise plans in an interview with the New York Times.

“I don’t know what the bigger picture is. But I think it’s really cool to take chances with the lesser-known characters and story lines,” said Wan. “It’s good if all the other films have their own flavor, so they don’t force them to feel the same.”

The director was asked if he would like to take over the role of franchise shepherd, which one was fulfilled by Zack Snyder. And even now that the Justice League director is out of the picture, Wan isn’t eager to step into those shoes.

It’s taken me so long just to finish this movie,” Wan said with a laugh. “I don’t want to think about somebody else’s movie at this point. I just want to survive this one.”

Sorry to those fans who were expecting Wan to chart the futures of the rest of the League, but it seems like he’s only focused on Aquaman for the time being. In fact, Wan was given a chance to direct a different project in one of the earliest meetings with Warner Bros., but he decided to focus on the rightful King of Atlantis.

“A few months later, I was in a general meeting with DC and they floated two properties that didn’t have filmmakers on board: the Flash and Aquaman,” Wan said.

“I felt the Flash had been done before. It had been on TV twice at that point. The one that had not been done was Aquaman. I realized, wow, his character resides in this crazy, big world, and I could do something very interesting with it. I look up to people like Spielberg, Cameron, Lucas, John Carpenter. I’m a fan of genre filmmaking, naturally. So I thought I could make Aquaman a genre film, meaning a horror monster movie. DC basically said, yes, you can make Aquaman versus sea monsters if that’s what you want.”

Fans can see Wan’s take on Aquaman when the film premieres this Friday, December 21st.