Aquaman is without a doubt the DCEU's most successful superhero right now. The first Aquaman film was released in 2018 and it immediately became a critical and commercial success crossing the billion dollar mark at the box office and receiving praise from critics and fans all around. After that, a sequel was most definitely going to happen and soon the news broke out that a sequel titled Aquaman and The Lost Kingdom has been given the green light.
The sequel has gone through quite a few schedule changes though. At first, it was scheduled to be released in December of 2022 but that release strategy was changed to March of 2023 and just as it seemed like the fateful day of the release was nearing, it has recently been announced that the release of the movie has been pushed to Christmas of next year, AKA 25th December 2023.
Ever since Warner Brothers completed their merger with Discovery turning the company into Warner Brothers Discovery, there have been massive changes in strategy all over their properties, especially with the DCEU and hence this kind of shifting of release dates is expected. In fact, the shifting of release dates is the least of the changes since some properties such as HBO Max's upcoming Batgirl movie have just straight up been scrapped and now they have no release date whatsoever pending further orders.
However, a valid reason has been given for the pushing forward of Aquaman 2 's release date. It has been said by officials, that the film has a lot of post-production work to be done, and hence more time is needed which makes sense given the extensive and gorgeous VFX work found in the first Aquaman which is only expected to double in the next one.
With the current frail state of the DCEU, there is a lot of pressure on Aquaman 2 to deliver just as well or beyond what its predecessor did. There isn't much known at the time about what the plot of the film will be based around but it has recently been confirmed that Ben Affleck's Batman will be showing up in the film. More updates are expected to leak as time goes on.