There’s not been much news on the Wonder Woman front for some time now. There was a flurry of excitement when it was announced that fanboy fave Joss Whedon would be writing and directing the movie version of comic books’ most famous Amazonian dominatrix, but that was almost two years ago. Since then, besides occasional casting rumors, nothing. Until now.
Warner Bros is buying a Wonder Woman script from a couple of newbies named Matthew Jennison and Brent Strickland. Their script is set against WWII, the original era when the comic character was created, while Whedon’s is set in the modern day. So why the heck have these two nobodies sold a script for a movie that already has a writer?
It sounds like a kind of blackmail, actually: Jennison and Strickland wrote this script on spec and were shopping it around (I don’t know to who, since Wonder Woman is owned by Warner Bros, and it isn’t like Whedon’s involvement is a secret. I guess they were using it as a calling card). Warner Bros got wind and bought the thing to head off any possible future lawsuits should Whedon’s version in any way resemble their version.
But I have to admit that I just don’t get it. Does this mean that I should be checking the trades to see what movies are in development and start shopping around specs based on those movies? I could probably whip up a pretty good Wolverine or Dark Knight script – would Fox or Warner Bros be compelled to buy them from me? The whole thing sounds assbackwards, but I have to admit that I never quite understood all the aspects of Hollywood as a business.
I sort of don’t think we’ll ever see Whedon’s Wonder Woman movie – it’s been languishing all this time while the guy is writing comic books, and I wonder if Warner Bros will really want to spend lots of money on a girl superhero when that particular strain of the genre has yet to monetize – in comics or on the big screen. Although they’re throwing money at buying random spec scripts for the character, so who knows. Maybe this is going to lead into some kind of big announcement in the weeks ahead. Or maybe they’ll just be celebrating Whedon’s second anniversary on the project in February. Here’s to two more years of development!