While the firestorm surrounding the never-ending battle between Johnny Depp and his ex-wife Amber Heard has quietened down in the last couple of weeks, fans are still lending their support to the petition to have the actress fired from Aquaman 2.
Nobody with any sort of power or influence in Hollywood ever pays attention to these sort of things, and though the campaign to have her booted as the DCEU’s Mera has racked up a huge amount of signatures, a similar effort to try and force the creative team behind Animaniacs to apologize for their Depp gag still hasn’t reached 1000 backers after three weeks in circulation.
Of course, the most recent reports don’t paint a pretty picture of Johnny’s immediate career prospects, even if he did walk away from Fantastic Beasts 3 $16 million richer having worked just a single day. Meanwhile, Disney are also said to have shot down Jerry Bruckheimer’s suggestion that he cameo as Captain Jack Sparrow in one of the upcoming Pirates of the Caribbean movies, and the only projects he has on the horizon are low budget biographical drama Minamata and an educational animated series where he voices a puffin based on himself.
As for Heard, she’ll next be seen in CBS’ big budget adaptation of The Stand, before getting an increased role in Zack Snyder’s Justice League, while she’ll report to the set of Aquaman 2 for duty at some point next year, and will no doubt pick up a hefty raise for playing the female lead in the sequel to the highest-grossing DC Comics adaptation ever made.
Both the actress and Warner Bros. seem to believe the petitions against her are artificially inflated, but with over 1.7 million signatures and counting, that’s an awful lot of bots and paid campaigners.