'Aquaman' Movie Moves Forward with Two Writers Penning Scripts

Was Zack Snyder doing more than just rushing to defend Aquaman last week when a Detroit radio station was slamming the underwater hero? Was he maybe teasing a major announcement he knew would be coming? He didn't officially reveal the character to be in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, but with Warner Bros. moving forward on a solo Aquaman film it seems more than likely.

A pair of screenwriters have been hired to write parallel scripts for an Aquaman movie, but the surprising news may be the studio's choices. One is Will Beall, the Gangster Squad scribe having written an early draft for Justice League that was rejected, leading to Chris Terrio (Argo) and David Goyer taking over. The other choice is Kurt Johnstad, who has worked with Snyder on 300 and its sequel 300: Rise of an Empire. They will write competing drafts that the studio, and presumably the eventual director, will select from. This has become a recurring practice for studios working on major projects because it gives them some flexibility, and if need be the leftover script can be utilized in a sequel.

This is probably the first of many such announcements as Warner Bros. has revealed an ambitious slate of release dates stretching through 2020. Aquaman will now apparently be filling one of those slots, with Jason Momoa expected to take on the role, although that has yet to be confirmed.  [THR]

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Kurt Johnstad doing rewrites on Man of Steel script

Rewrites on any film aren't that big of a deal. Happens all the time. It's really only news when it's a movie as big as Man of Steel, and when the studio is clearly in a rush to get it off the ground. With all the legal issues surrounding Superman, it's gotta be done soon. But that's an issue for those more familiar with copyright squabbles than me. What matters right now is that there were reports awhile back about David Goyer's script maybe sorta not being so strong. Whether that's true or not, I don't know, but according to Moviehole, Warner Brothers has tasked Kurt Johnstad to give the script a punching up.

No biggie, right? Except the report also notes that Christopher Nolan's bro, Jonathan Nolan, took a crack at the script as well. That's a lot of touching up, which leads me to believe that somebody has a real problem with it. Goyer has a lot on his plate, which could explain why he's not doing the job himself. He was recently signed to write the story for the upcoming Godzilla reboot.

Johnstad is a close buddy and frequent collaborator of director Zack Snyder. The two co-wrote the script for the 300 sequel, Battle of Artemisia. So it doesn't surprise me he's been brought on here, especially with this being such a pressure cooker of a project.

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