Elon Musk allegedly came to Amber Heard‘s defense amid talks his former partner would be fired from “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom.”
Per a new Variety report, the Tesla and X (formerly known as Twitter) owner is reported to have strong-armed Warner Bros. into keeping Heard cast as Mera in DC’s long-delayed “Aquaman” follow-up.
According to Variety, Warner Bros. and “Aquaman” director James Wan sent a letter to Heard’s attorney Karl Austen after the film‘s 2018 release to share the decision that Heard would be dropped from the sequel, citing a lack of chemistry with star Jason Momoa.
However, per Variety, Warner Bros. decided not to fire Heard after her former boyfriend Musk and his attorney sent a “scorched-earth letter to Warner Bros. threatening to burn the house down” if Heard was not back in the sequel.
DC Studios could not immediately be reached by IndieWire for comment.
Rumors that Heard would be fired from the “Aquaman” franchise resurfaced amid the defamation trial with Heard and her ex-husband Johnny Depp, with the suit filed in 2019 followed by televised court proceedings in 2022. Heard alleged Depp led a PR “smear campaign” against her, resulting in a “very pared-down version” of her original “Aquaman 2” role.
“I fought to keep my job and the biggest movie opportunity I had to date [with] ‘Justice League’ with the option to [star in] ‘Aquaman.’ I had to fight really hard to stay in ‘Justice League’ because that was the time of the divorce,” Heard said while on the stand. “I was given a script [for ‘Aquaman 2’] and then given new versions of the script that had taken away scenes that had action in it, that depicted my character and another character, without giving any spoilers away, two characters fighting with one another, and they basically took a bunch out of my role.”
Reportedly, Heard appears in only 10 minutes of the sequel. Wan told Entertainment Weekly earlier this year that the sequel was never meant to focus on Heard’s character.
Also during the trial, notes of Heard’s therapy sessions were included in court documents, which Depp fans later paid to access and shared online. Heard claimed while in therapy that “Aquaman” co-star Jason Momoa drunkenly harassed her on set, including, per her point of view, dressing up as Depp.
Heard’s notes read, “Jason said he wanted me fired. Jason drunk — late on set. Dressing like Johnny. Has all the rings too.”
A DC spokesperson told Variety, “Jason Momoa conducted himself in a professional manner at all times on the set of ‘Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom.'”
An insider who was on the London set in 2021 told Variety, “He isn’t dressing like Johnny Depp. He has always dressed in that bohemian style.”
“Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom” is set for a December 20 release date.
Right? It says he went "scorched-earth", but that implies he has any sway over WB decisions. What would he do if they don't listen to him? Whine about it on Twitter?
The entire market cap of WB Discovery is less than he’s already lost on Twitter. Their cap is about $25B. Musk spent $44B on Twitter and has absolutely destroyed it like a bull in a china shop to the point that it’s now worth less than $10B, with some estimates coming in between $4-5B.
That said, the far right movement in this country is such that he can hang a legitimate threat over people and companies just by his outsized media presence.
I’d love to see the content of the letter.
Yeah but he used a ton of other people’s money to buy Twitter and destroy it, and even as the worst investment in history, there’s immense political value in letting him shit the bed with his new toy. He wouldn’t be able to get financing to spite-fuck WB because he’s a whiny little baby.
Ok? What does any of that matter? He has literally no control over WB no matter how much he's worth.
Let me try to keep it simple for you.
In capitalism money is power, man with lot of money have lot of power. Ooga booga strong arm your whole company.
The only way Musky uses his "power" is trying to bully people with his cohort of sycophants, or by giving them money to buy them out. Neither really scream "Do what I say, or else!"
I would imagine the most threatening thing would be that he'd fund her tieing them up in litigation until they caved out paid her a settlement worth me than her contract.
Maybe... But the far right also famously hates Amber Heard, as they were ones pushing much of the negative media attention against her during the public trial. Hell, the Daily Wire (Ben Shapiro's outlet) was running an entire ad campaign against her. Regardless of what anyone thinks of Heard, the idea Musk could believably threaten anyone with "the far right" in this situation isn't realistic.
Welcome to America, the land of paying your own court costs.
To put it another way, you can set a pile of money on fire, and your opponent either has to do the same or give you what you want. You can only make the other guy pay you back in certain types of lawsuits, and the process can go on for years if you burn enough money
Musk is a billionaire with anger issues currently going through some kind of mid-life crisis, and has spent months dancing around the largest money fire in history, regularly loudly throwing on more fuel (just in case some of the money remains unburnt)
And btw, you can sue anyone for any reason... the judge just might throw out the case if it's too dumb
WB doesn't care about frivolous lawsuits, even from someone as rich as musk. Unless they were sued by him thousands of times at once, their legal costs are already baked into their financials, and if they were sued thousands of times at once, that'd be the easiest dismissal in history, as well as the quickest countersuit for damages.
The rich can bully the poor's with legal fees, but not each other. That's why we don't see uncountable fruitless lawsuits between the powerful - it wouldn't do anything.
He could always just publicly massively overbid on a hostile takeover of WB to push his weight around which backfires when he realizes he's paying way too much and gets sued into going through with the purchase anyways because its a massive golden parachute for the top brass at WB that far exceeds any profits they had planned to produce in the next 10 years. Then he can make movies any way he wants.