DC producer says Trench spinoff is not a prequel, will arrive before Aquaman 2

In early February, Warner Bros. announced that it was working on an Aquaman spinoff revolving around the monstrous Kingdom of the Trench.

Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, producer Peter Safran dropped some of the first real details about the horror-centric project. For one thing, he confirmed that it will take place after the events of Aquaman and won't feature Arthur Curry (Jason Momoa) or Mera (Amber Heard).

“We always, even from the early concept art days, loved the idea of a Trench movie,” he said. “Then, when audiences embraced it in the movie itself the way they did, particularly that ant farm shot where the camera follows the Trench [creatures] following Arthur and Mera down into the deep, we just knew that we had something very special there and we knew what that movie should be. And consequently, I suspect that that’s one that will come out significantly before Aquaman 2.”

One of the kingdoms of Atlantis, the look of the Trench was partly inspired by the writings of H.P. Lovecraft and is populated by sightless monsters that were once normal people, who devolved into a much more primitive form. In order to get to the Trident of Atlan in the Earth's core, Arthur and Mera must pass through this dark and dreary landscape that is the Trench.

“We’ve definitely taken a page from our Conjuring playbook, which is: You’ve got the mothership, which is Aquaman, but there are so many great stories to tell within that universe of itself, that Atlantean universe,” he said of the ripeness for squeezing the wider universe for connected films.

The Trench doesn't have a release date just yet, but last week it was confirmed that Aquaman 2 would swim into theaters on Dec. 22, 2022 — four years after the original. So, there's plenty of time to fit a Trench flick in there along the way.