Well, it's been quite the week for DC fans. Again.
In a series of interviews conducted for Netflix's Heart of Stone, Gal Gadot has talked repeatedly about meeting with DC Studios' co-CEOs James Gunn and Peter Safran, revealing they assured her that she will return as the iconic DC Comics character in a new Wonder Woman movie.
Despite the definitive nature of Gadot's comments, they still raised eyebrows. When DC Studios announced its "Chapter 1: Gods and Monsters" slate, a Max series set on Themyscira was promised, but Patty Jenkins' Wonder Woman 3...well, it was scrapped. Patty Jenkins' vision for the threequel didn't line up with wider plans for the new DCU, but the door was seemingly left open when it came to the actress returning.
However, Gunn has been frustratingly vague about which actors will and won't be part of this rebooted world; the filmmaker has enlisted many of the performers he worked with on Peacemaker and The Suicide Squad, for example, but has ditched everyone from Henry Cavill to Ben Affleck and Dwayne Johnson. He also teased a future for Ezra Miller's Barry Allen after describing The Flash as "the greatest superhero movie ever made" and said the movie would help reset the DCEU. It didn't.
Blue Beetle, meanwhile, is being released this month and it's a DCEU movie with a lead who is supposedly the DCU's first superhero. Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom will be the final DCEU movie come December but its lead star is expected to play Lobo in the DCU instead of Arthur Curry. Are you struggling to keep up?
DC Studios expects causal moviegoers to just accept that David Corenswet will be Superman in place of Cavill, even though Margot Robbie will more than likely still be Harley Quinn. Those characters can quite easily be kept apart, but having Gadot's Wonder Woman standing next to the new Superman and Batman with the now-clichéd theme playing in the background is bound to only further increase confusion. Honestly, it makes all the sense in the world to recast the Amazon Warrior.
So, what was the deal with Gadot's Wonder Woman 3 comments?
In mid-July, SAG-AFTRA went on strike. Actors were then prohibited from promoting upcoming projects, but many studios saw this coming. In the case of Heart of Stone, interviews were likely conducted in late June (they wouldn't have happened during shooting because junkets take place shortly before a movie is released and press are only allowed to attend after watching the completed picture).
That's a good six months after the DCU slate was revealed, and Gadot was clearly confident about Wonder Woman 3 becoming a reality. Or was she? It's possible the actress misunderstood her meetings with Gunn and Safran, though that's doubtful. In fact, based on comments from Gunn in January, her enthusiasm may have been rather one-sided. "We've talked to Gal [Gadot]. She's up for doing stuff," he said. "We're not sure what we're going to do with that." Still, how better to promote another mediocre Netflix action movie than by talking up the scrapped Wonder Woman sequel and generating a week's worth of headlines? No one was talking about Heart of Stone before them, that's for sure.
We also can't discount the possibility of Gadot attempting to force DC Studios' hand, but as we've learned from The Rock and Black Adam, that's not something Gunn and Safran will tolerate. Variety, Deadline, and The Wrap were all quite blatantly fed those denials of Gadot's comments by Warner Bros. and/or DC Studios, suggesting they're not even remotely on board with what she's saying. Have they changed their minds and pulled the rug out from under her? It's possible, albeit unlikely, particularly as they didn't hesitate to give Cavill and Johnson their marching orders despite Black Adam's post-credits scene setting up an eventual crossover.
Did Gadot lie? We don't know, but that's the narrative which the studio has created, and this is yet another example of the DC brand being in disarray. Many fans did get excited about seeing the actress as Wonder Woman again and have now been left disappointed. You can blame Gadot for that, but why didn't Gunn and Safran make their position clearer at the start of the year? The DCU, meanwhile, remains a muddled, hard-to-follow franchise before it even begins, with the DCEU faithful forced to bid farewell to the actors they loved (a sad inevitability of any reboot) while also being asked to embrace Nathan Fillion as Green Lantern after he starred as T.D.K. in The Suicide Squad alongside a number of actors who will return in the DCU as the same characters they played there. Huh?!
Is it too soon to reboot the reboot?