Before James Wan landed the directing gig for "Aquaman," Jeff Nichols was in talks to helm the Atlantean king's adventures on the big screen. During a recent interview, he discussed the way the DC Cinematic Universe has developed at Warner Bros., which was why he ultimately turned "Aquaman" down.

"With the DC universe, so many parts of it had been activated and so many decisions had already been made that it felt more and more -- and Warner Bros. agreed -- that it was me trying to jump on a moving train. That's not so much what I'm good at. I'm more of a ground up kinda guy," he told ScreenCrush.

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"It's all a connected universe. And it should be. And I was an advocate of that," he added. "The decisions that Zack [Snyder] is going to make in 'Batman v. Superman,' those all connect to things that are going to happen in Justice League and all that. And I was a huge comic book nerd, so I know all these characters and they all need to be beautifully webbed together. I was just far enough on the outside that I could develop things in a vacuum all day long but it wasn't going to line up with everything they had planned."

Directed by Wan and starring Jason Momoa in the title role, "Aquaman" is currently scheduled for release on July 27, 2018. Writers David Leslie Johnson and Kurt Johnstad are concurrently working on separate "Aquaman" scripts. "Justice League," directed by Zack Snyder, is scheduled for Nov. 17, 2017.

Directed by Snyder and starring Henry Cavill, Ben Affleck, Gal Gadot, Jesse Eisenberg, Laurence Fishburne, Amy Adams and others, "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice" hits screens on March 25.