The petition calling for Amber Heard's removal from the Aquaman sequel movie has now surpassed 3 million signatures.
Created by Jeanne Larson, the Change.org petition is addressed to DC Entertainment and Warner Bros, with the header: 'Remove Amber Heard from Aquaman 2'.
The petition was first created back in the fall of 2020, after it was announced that Johnny Depp would be replaced by Mads Mikkelsen in the Harry Potter spin-off movie, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore.
In an Instagram post, Depp says he was asked by Warner Bros to resign from the role of Gellert Grindelwald in the franchise, following headlines surrounding his contentious separation from Heard and his subsequent libel case against British newspaper The Sun.
Per CNN, Depp attempted to sue the tabloid and its executive editor Dan Wootton, over an article published bearing the headline: "GONE POTTY: How can JK Rowling be 'genuinely happy' casting wife-beater Johnny Depp in the new Fantastic Beasts film?"
Depp went on to lose the libel case, with BBC News reporting that judge Andrew Nicol said The Sun had published an article containing information that was "substantially true".
However, ever since the 58-year-old Pirates of the Caribbean star took to the stand in his $50 million defamation lawsuit against his ex-wife in April, fan support has once again started to grow for the actor.
Depp is suing Heard after she referred to herself as a "public figure representing domestic abuse" in a 2018 op-ed she wrote for The Washington Post. Depp has repeatedly denied the allegations that he was physically violent toward his ex-wife.
The Aquaman star is countersuing Depp for $100 million - claiming she was only ever violent against her ex-husband in self-defense or defense of her younger sister, per NBC News.
In fact, Larson's Change.org petition has gained so much traction that it has amassed more than 1 million new signatures in less than a week - with the current total now standing at 3,004,126 signatures (as of this writing).
In its description, Larson writes: "Amber Heard has been exposed as a domestic abuser by Johnny Depp.
"In his $50 million lawsuit, Johnny Depp describes many incidents of domestic abuse that he suffered at the hands of his (then) wife Amber Heard, including one incident where she punched him twice in the face and another where she shattered his finger with a vodka bottle, and his finger had to be surgically reattached. He will bear the scar from that for the rest of his life."
The description concludes: "As Amber Heard is a known and proven domestic abuser, Warner Brothers and DC Entertainment should and must remove Heard from their Aquaman 2 film project. They must not ignore the suffering of Heard's victims, and must not glamorize a domestic abuser.
"Men are victims of domestic abuse, just like women. This must be recognized, and action must be taken to prevent a known abuser from being celebrated within the entertainment industry.
"Do the right thing. Remove Amber Heard from Aquaman 2."
In the 2018 DC comic movie, Heard starred as Mera, the love interest to Jason Momoa's Aquaman and princess of Xebel.
She is set to reprise her role in the upcoming sequel, titled Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, which is set for release in March 2023.
The film's producer, Peter Safran, had previously told the Deadline Hero Nation podcast that the movie's creators were never "going to react" to what he described as "pure fan pressure".
Safran continued: "You gotta do what’s best for the movie. We felt that if it’s James Wan, and Jason Momoa, it should be Amber Heard. That’s really what it was."
However, film critic Grace Randolph - whose YouTube channel Behind The Trailer boasts over 940,000 subscribers - tweeted on Friday that Heard's screentime in the Aquaman sequel clocks in at under 10 minutes. However, this claim is yet to be verified.
