Wonder Woman game reportedly “still years away from release” – if it ever launches at all

Three years after its announcement, the future of Warner Bros.’s Wonder Woman game is reportedly in question – with its release said to still be “years away” if it ever launches at all.

That’s according to a new report by Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, detailing the behind-the-scenes turmoil caused by a culture of “ineffectual trend-chasing and wasted development time” at Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment during the tenure of outgoing president David Haddad – a period said to have lacked a “strong, cohesive vision” .

Some casualties of Warner Bros.’s reported culture under Haddad are already well-documented, with Warner Bros. Montreal’s Gotham Knights, Rocksteady’s Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, party brawler MultiVersus, and last year’s Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions all having failed to resonate with consumers. However, Bloomberg’s report also highlights a number of other projects that have either failed or floundered behind closed doors.

Monolith’s Wonder Woman game, for instance, has reportedly “struggled to coalesce” in the years since its announcement in 2021, with the project having switched directors and been rebooted early last year, according to “people familiar with the business”. Wonder Woman is said to have already cost Warner $100m and is still “years away from release”, if it manages to make it to market at all – its fate, according to Bloomberg’s sources, “remains in question”.

Bloomberg reports Monolith had originally wanted to follow up its acclaimed Middle-Earth games with a new franchise experimenting with procedural storytelling. However, Warner Bros. execs are said to have pushed for the studio to incorporate one of its big IPs, and the game “plodded along for more than three years” before its cancellation – at which point Monolith head Kevin Stephens and many directors departed. After that, remaining staff began working on the Wonder Woman project, initially attempting to incorporate a version of Shadow of Mordor’s Nemesis system before switching to a “more traditional action-adventure game”.

As revealed last March, Gotham Knights studio Warner Bros. Montreal has now been drafted in to help Monolith get Wonder Woman over the finish line. However, Bloomberg says the Montreal team was initially hoping to make a game based on comic book antihero John Constantine – hopes that were dashed when execs pushed the team toward a “more recognisable character” such as the Joker or Flash. The studio ultimately opted to make a Flash game, but the project was scrapped after Warner’s 2023 Flash movie flopped at the box office – leading to the resignation of “most of” Montreal’s leadership team. The studio is now said to be working on a pitch for a Game of Thrones title, as it continues to help out on Wonder Woman.

Bloomberg’s sources say the major gaps in Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment’s portfolio left by the company’s string of cancellations and commercial failures during Haddad’s tenure are likely to persist “for the next year or two”. There’s one potential bright spot on the horizon, however, with developer Rocksteady – following the demise of its live-service-focused Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League – now said to be “looking to return to Batman for a single-player game”. The project, though, is still “years away from landing”.