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By Three years after its announcement, the future of Warner Bros.’s Wonder Woman game is reportedly in doubt – with its release believed to still be “years away,” if it ever launches at all.
This information stems from a new report by Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, which outlines the behind-the-scenes chaos caused by a culture of “ineffective trend-chasing and squandered development time” at Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment during the leadership of former president David Haddad – a time characterized by a “lack of a strong, cohesive vision.”
Several casualties of Warner Bros.’s reported culture under Haddad are already well-documented, with titles such as Warner Bros. Montreal’s Gotham Knights, Rocksteady’s Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, team-based brawler MultiVersus, and last year’s Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions all failing to connect with audiences. However, Bloomberg’s report also sheds light on several other projects that have either faltered or floundered behind closed doors.
Monolith’s Wonder Woman game, for instance, has reportedly “struggled to find direction” in the years following its announcement in 2021, with the project changing directors and undergoing a reboot early last year, according to “sources familiar with the situation.” Wonder Woman is said to have already cost Warner $100 million and is still “years away from release,” if it ever reaches the market – its fate, according to Bloomberg’s sources, “remains uncertain.”
Bloomberg reports that Monolith initially aimed to blend its acclaimed Middle-earth games with a new franchise that experimented with procedural storytelling. However, Warner Bros. executives are reported to have urged the studio to incorporate one of the company’s major IPs, resulting in the game “plodding along for more than three years” before its cancellation – at which point Monolith head Kevin Stephens and several directors left. Afterwards, a new team began working on Wonder Woman, initially trying to adapt a version of Shadow of Mordor’s Nemesis system before pivoting to a “more traditional action-adventure game.”
As disclosed last March, the studio behind Gotham Knights, Warner Bros. Montreal, has now been brought in to assist Monolith in completing Wonder Woman. However, Bloomberg states that the Montreal team originally hoped to create a game centered around comic book antihero John Constantine – aspirations that were dashed when executives pushed the team towards a “more recognizable character” like the Joker or Flash. Ultimately, the studio decided to develop a Flash game, but the project was scrapped after Warner’s 2023 Flash movie underperformed at the box office – leading to the reallocation of resources.