'Aquaman' Sequel Titled 'Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom' – Here's What That Could Mean

Aquaman 2 won't be called Aquaman 2.. Director James Wan, returning to helm the sequel to the hit 2018 DC superhero film starring Jason Momoa, has revealed the official title as the film heads into production: Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom.

Wan revealed the Aquaman 2 title to be Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, sharing the title in an Instagram picture with the caption, "The tide is rising." The image displayed Wan's computer screen, which revealed that he was in a production meeting for the highly anticipated sequel.

Wan is directing Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, which will be penned by the filmmaker's frequent collaborator David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick. Johnson-McGoldrick co-wrote the first film with Will Beall based on a story by Geoff Johns, Beall and Wan. Wan is also producing the sequel with Peter Safran.

We don't have many details yet on Aquaman 2, but we do know that Jason Momoa will reprise his role as Arthur Curry/Aquaman, alongside Amber Heard, Willem Dafoe, Patrick Wilson, Nicole Kidman, Yahya Abdul-Mateen, and Dolph Lundgren. Game of Thrones actor Pilou Asbaek has also joined the cast in an undisclosed role. Wan has teased he plans to bring back some of his "horror sensibilities" into the sequel, after the Conjuring and Saw filmmaker gave us just a little taste of the genre in the first film.

But with the new official title, we can glean just a little more about the Aquaman sequel.

In 2015, Jason Momoa's Aquaman made his character poster debut with the slogan "Unite the Seven," igniting all kinds of theories about what that could mean for Justice League. But it was not a reference to Justice League, but to Aquaman, in which the seven kingdoms of Atlantis heavily featured.

In the movie's mythology, the mythical city of Atlantis once existed on land. But due to the hubris of its advanced people, it sank to the bottom of the sea, where it split into seven distinct kingdoms. Those kingdoms include Atlantis, Xebel, the Kingdom of the Fishermen, the Kingdom of the Brine, the Kingdom of the Trench, the Kingdom of the Deserters, and a final unnamed Kingdom.

King Orm (Patrick Wilson), Arthur Curry's younger half-brother, rules Atlantis and sought to unite all the kingdoms against the surface world during the events of Aquaman. Xebel is the wary ally of Atlantis ruled by King Nereus (Dolph Lundgren), the father of Princess Mera (Amber Heard). The Fishermen Kingdom were a nation of philosophers that adapted to life underwater, evolving to closely resemble the creatures of the sea, complete with gills and fish-like tails. The Brine evolved even further away from human form to become a crustacean-like race with armored shells and crab claws. The Trench migrated to the deepest and darkest place in the ocean, the Mariana Trench, and devolved into bloodthirsty sea monsters. And lastly, there's the Kingdom of Deserters, which died out when the Sahara Desert became, well, a desert.

The final kingdom is never named, though it is said to have collapsed along with the Deserter Kingdom. There's a possibility that the Lost Kingdom might be in the Hidden Sea, a prehistoric location at Earth's core populated by dinosaurs, where Arthur and Mera discovered Atlan's tomb. But a report from Production Weekly (via Heroic Hollywood) said that Aquaman 2 will shoot under the working title Necrus, which is the name of a domed underwater city in DC Comics which only exists on the material plane for brief periods of time and contains a militaristic people ruled over by the tyrant king, Mongo. In the comics, Necrus goes to war with Atlantis, and perhaps that's what will unfold in Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom.

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom will open in theaters on December 16, 2022.