Jason Momoa‘s Aquaman which came out in 2018 remains the highest-grossing movie in the DCEU. The film raked in a whopping $1.148 billion at the box office, allowing for a sequel to be given the green light by Warner Brothers. With Justice League and Wonder Woman 1984 performing incredibly poor at the box office, Aquaman is currently the DCEU’s most precious commodity, and Momoa and his team clearly know this very well because according to recent reports, Jason Momoa has renegotiated his contract for the Aquaman sequel and managed to raise his salary for the film to double what he got paid the first time around. Momoa is now being paid $15 million for the film that is slated to be released on 17 March 2023.

The first film followed the character Aquaman AKA Arthur Curry as he struggled to avoid the burden of his lineage, trying to stay away from the politics of the underwater civilization Atlantis. Arthur could not stay away from the matters of Atlantis when he realized that his half-brother The Ocean Master (played by Patrick Wilson) was planning to wage war on the world on land. Arthur had to take his destined place as King of Atlantis in order to stop the war from occurring.

The sequel of the movie is titled Aquaman and The Lost Kingdom, but other than the title, there is not much known about the project at the moment. Director James Wan, who directed the first movie is confirmed to return and so are cast members from the first movie including Amber Heard, Nicole Kidman, Patrick Wilson, Dolph Lundgren, and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II.

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While a higher salary for Momoa doesn’t necessarily confirm a great movie dropping in March but expectations have been set high for Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom after the success of the first one. The pressure is also on since recent DCEU projects have failed to perform up to the mark which is expected of such a high-end studio and the DCEU’s struggling state desperately needs a win.