The Get Down’s Yahya Abdul-Mateen II to play Aquaman’s Black Manta

By Sam Barsanti | January 31, 2017 | 9:09pm

Aux Features Film

Despite Michael K. Williams publicly throwing his name into the running, Warner Bros. has announced that Yahya Abdul-Mateen II from Netflix’s The Get Down will be playing the villainous Black Manta in director James Wan’s Aquaman movie. That comes from Variety, which says Moonlight‘s Trevante Rhodes and 24: Legacy‘s Corey Hawkins were also in the running, but the studio went with Abdul-Mateen instead—possibly because he simply looked better in Black Manta’s ridiculous helmet.

We don’t know much about the movie version of Black Manta, but he’s pretty much always depicted as the archenemy of Aquaman (played by Jason Momoa in the film), and he’s often the leader of an evil underwater militia of some sort. The Aquaman movie will reportedly involve tensions between the surface world and the Atlanteans that Aquaman rules over, but it’s unclear how Black Manta will fit into that just yet.