A years-old petition to remove Mera actor Amber Heard from Warner Bros. and DC Films' Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom hit a major milestone.
At the time of this writing, more than 2.1 million people have signed the Change.org petition demanding Heard be removed from the sequel in light of her highly publicized issues with ex-husband Johnny Depp. "In his $50 million lawsuit, Johnny Depp describes many incidents of domestic abuse that he suffered at the hands of his (then) wife Amber Heard, including one incident where she punched him twice in the face and another where she shattered his finger with a vodka bottle, and his finger had to be surgically reattached," the petition reads. It also cites Heard's 2009 arrest for domestic abuse against Tasya Van Ree, "demonstrating a repeated pattern of abuse by Amber Heard."
The aforementioned $50 million defamation lawsuit is currently in full swing in Virginia nearly two years after Depp lost a libel case against The Sun over a headline that referred to him as a "wife beater." Days later, Warner Bros. asked him to resign from Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore.
Though Heard portrayed Arthur Curry's love interest Mera in 2018's Aquaman, it was recently revealed that she was nearly dropped from the sequel due to chemistry concerns with lead actor Jason Momoa.
Of course, the petition to remove Heard from Aquaman 2 hasn't gone unnoticed by those at Warner Bros. That said, producer Peter Safran made it clear that the studio wouldn't be swayed. "I don't think we're ever going to react to, honestly, pure fan pressure," he said in July 2021. "You gotta do what's best for the movie. We felt that if it's James Wan, and Jason Momoa, it should be Amber Heard. That's really what it was. One is not unaware of what is going on in the Twitter-verse, but that doesn't mean you have to react to it or take it as gospel or accede to their wishes. You have to do what’s right for the film, and that’s really where we landed on it."
Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom arrives in theaters March 17, 2023.
Source: Change.org