Warner Bros.' Aquaman will arrive in North American theaters next week having already earned more than $250 million overseas, and its share of positive reviews. But in another timeline, that might have been The Flash in its place.

In a New York Times profile, director James Wan reveals he was presented with Aquaman and The Flash, neither of which had filmmakers attached, following the 2013 premiere of his horror hit The Conjuring. He chose Aquaman, of course, but for perhaps not-so-obvious reasons.

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"I felt The Flash had been done before. It had been on TV twice at that point," he explained. "The one that had not been done was Aquaman. I realized, wow, his character resides in this crazy, big world, and I could do something very interesting with it. I look up to people like Spielberg, Cameron, Lucas, John Carpenter. I’m a fan of genre filmmaking, naturally. So I thought I could make Aquaman a genre film, meaning a horror monster movie. DC basically said, yes, you can make Aquaman versus sea monsters if that’s what you want."

An Aquaman television series had been attempted, by Smallville creators Al Gough and Miles Millar, but fell victim to the 2006 merger of The WB and UPN into The CW, and never made it past the pilot stage.

Needless to say, that project didn't approach the scope of Wan's Aquaman, with its estimated production budget of $160 million to $200 million. That enabled the filmmaker to create a vast alien world in the form of Atlantis, on par with anything seen in Star Wars or Avatar, and, yes, to pit Aquaman against sea monsters, large and small.

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In the meantime, Warner Bros.' The Flash has passed from writer to writer, and director to director, before finally settling on Spider-Man: Homecoming scribes John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein. Although The Flash was announced in 2014 by Warner Bros. to arrive this year, along with Aquaman, after repeated delays it's now expected to begin production sometime next year.

Directed by James Wan, Aquaman stars Jason Momoa as Aquaman, Amber Heard as Mera, Patrick Wilson as Ocean Master, Willem Dafoe as Nuidis Vulko, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Black Manta, Temuera Morrison as Thomas Curry, Dolph Lundgren as Nereus, and Nicole Kidman as Queen Atlanna. The film opens Dec. 21 nationwide.

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