The most shocking thing about Joss Whedon being off the Wonder Woman movie is how quickly it was announced. Just yesterday, Warner Bros bought a non-Whedon Wonder Woman script, claiming they were trying to head off a potential lawsuit. Many people were skeptical – those people were justified today when Whedon announced he was off the project.
The reason? Creative differences, of course. In a post on Whedonesque, Joss says that “I had a take on the film that, well, nobody liked.” Which is pretty straight-forward. I imagine that this character is one that makes the suits nervous, and unless they feel that the concept behind it is a slam dunk, they don’t want to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on it.
The turnaround of the announcement was impressive – I thought we would be waiting weeks to hear that Whedon was off the film, but instead we only had hours.
So what now? Whedon continues to write comics and goes forward on his next movie, Goners, which sounds a little Buffy-esque. As for Wonder Woman? That film is probably dead, to be frank, unless someone comes up with a killer – and cheap – way of doing it.