Comic book movie fans were shocked to learn last week that Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman 3 will not be moving forward.
After news hit, the current co-chair and co-CEO of DC studios, James Gunn publicly responded to rumors originally shared in the Hollywood Reporter with a lengthy twitter thread which stated in part, “So. As for the story yesterday in the Hollywood Reporter, some of it is true, some of it is half-true, some of it is not true, & some of it we haven’t decided yet whether it’s true or not.”
And the Plot Thickens
It seems that “what’s half-true” is that the new co-CEOs and co-chairs of DC studios weren’t exactly the ones who made the decision not to go forward with Wonder Woman 3. According to The Wrap, Wonder Woman and Wonder Woman 1984 director Patty Jenkins and Warner Bros. did not agree at all regarding the direction of Wonder Woman 3, with the director going as far as to send a petty, passive-aggressive email after the meeting.
Gunn and co-chair and co-CEO Peter Safran have not yet unveiled their plans for the DCU with David Zaslav, the head of Warner Brothers Discovery, let alone the rest of the world, but they have been working tirelessly to concoct a plan to create a more cohesive DC Universe. Allegedly the treatment Jenkins submitted did not fit directly into their tentative plan and Warner Bros. Film Group Co-Chairpersons and CEOs Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy didn’t think the treatment worked and decided not to move forward with the film in its current iteration.
According to The Wrap, De Luca and Abdy spoke to Jenkins first and explained that they didn’t think it was the right direction for the franchise and asked Jenkins if she would consider pitching something else for the IP in another direction.
One insider told the publication that Jenkins utterly refused and let De Luca and Abdy “know that they were wrong, that they didn’t understand her, didn’t understand the character, didn’t understand character arcs and didn’t understand what Jenkins was trying to.”
After allegedly storming out of the meeting, later on, Jenkins allegedly sent a snarky and petty email to De Luca that ended with a link to the Wikipedia definition of “character arc.”
According to The Wrap, even after all the drama, Jenkins was invited to come back and pitch a different direction for Wonder Woman 3 and the studio would hear it, however Jenkins basically told them that if they didn’t want to go with her plan, she had no intention of going in a different direction and she would just pass altogether and move onto another project elsewhere.
Apparently, Gunn and Safran had absolutely nothing to do with the decision-making, but it didn’t matter anyway because she didn’t want to hear their opinions at all. “She just doesn’t want to allow them to have a seat at the table to have an opinion on something new that she might come up with,” the insider told The Wrap.
This news doesn’t exactly mean that 1984 is the last we will see of Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman. We will definitely see her in Shazam! Fury of the Gods and it is totally possible that she can still appear in Wonder Woman 3 with another director at the helm.
REELated: James Gunn tweets about Superman’s place in the DCU
We still have to look forward to Shazam! Fury of the Gods, The Flash, Blue Beetle and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom before we can even get started with Gunn and Safran’s vision of the future.
On TV, there are still four DC series – The Flash which will end its run with a shortened Season 9, Superman and Lois, Doom Patrol and Titans.
As we previously reported, not all DC projects will fall under Gunn and Safran’s leadership. Todd Phillips’ Joker sequel will be overseen by De Luca and Abdy and Matt Reeves’ Batman universe in which Robert Pattinson dons the cowl of the Caped Crusader seems to still be alive and kicking with Reeves writing the sequel to The Batman, which opened March 4. The filmmaker is also overseeing the launch of two Batman series that spin out of his movie, including The Penguin.
