Connie Nielsen, who played Hippolyta in Wonder Woman, thinks it’s “crazy” that Warner Bros. abandoned the planned third movie from director Patty Jenkins and star Gal Gadot. The first Wonder Woman was a critical and commercial high point for the DC Extended Universe, earning over $800 million and a Hugo Award. It also served as a powerful message to big studios, becoming the highest-grossing film ever directed by a woman. By 2020, though, its sequel came out to mediocre reviews and a limp box office, hampered by the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic as well as Warner Bros.’ decision to release all their theatrical films day-and-date on HBO Max.
Even then, the plan was to make a third movie, with management supposedly understanding that a lot of the performance issues weren’t to do with the movie itself as much as the world around it. That movie never got into production, though, because Warner Bros. restructured DC Films into DC Studios and hired new executives who decided to reboot the shared universe.
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“I think it’s crazy. I mean, frankly, I don’t understand it,” Nielsen told Den of Geek as part of the Gladiator II press junket. “[Wonder Woman] made $800 million just in the movie theaters, and it has an enormous and passionate, passionate fan base. These are spectacular films, and there’s just no reason I can understand whatsoever for not investing in that. If I were a business person, I would say that’s money on the table. It’s right there. Plus every time we’ve done it, [it was] with budgets that were way smaller than any of the other DC budgets.”
There are no immediate plans by DC Studios bosses James Gunn and Peter Safran to make a Wonder Woman movie, although DC is planning a TV series that centers on the Amazons in Themyscira. It’s assumed that the role of Wonder Woman will be recast once she returns in the new universe of movies. Both Superman and Batman have new movies coming, although it’s arguable that neither Henry Cavill nor Ben Affleck was as uniformly accepted in the role as Gadot. It’s plausible Gunn believes his new universe has to be better established before recasting an actor everyone loves.
After the third movie was cancelled, Jenkins moved on, saying she is not interested in another Wonder Woman for the time being. Co-star Chris Pine was seemingly pretty shocked by the decision, too.
“I’m stunned that they said no to a billion-dollar franchise and decided to pivot elsewhere,” Pine said in May. “I don’t know what the reasoning was behind that; it’s above my pay grade, but Wonder Woman is an incredible character; Patty is such a thoughtful director.”
