Gal Gadot raised eyebrows recently when she claimed she might still appear in a third Wonder Woman film under the auspices of new DC Studios bosses — and architects of the rebooted DC Universe in film and TV — James Gunn and Peter Safran.
“I love portraying Wonder Woman,” Gadot told Comicbook.com in an interview promoting her Netflix thriller Heart of Stone. “It’s so close to and dear to my heart. From what I heard from James and from Peter is that we’re gonna develop a Wonder Woman 3 together.”
The actor was even more definitive in an interview with Flaunt magazine. “I was invited to a meeting with James Gunn and Peter Safran,” Gadot said, “and what they told me, and I’m quoting: ‘You’re in the best hands. We’re going to develop Wonder Woman 3 with you. [We] love you as Wonder Woman — you’ve got nothing to worry about.’”
But now “sources with knowledge of the situation” have told Variety that Gadot is mistaken. According to those sources, nothing was promised to the actor, Wonder Woman 3 is not in development, and there are no plans for any Wonder Woman project within the new DC Universe beyond the Max prequel series Paradise Lost, which will be set on the island of Themyscira, home to Wonder Woman’s tribe of Amazonian superwomen, before her time.
There wasn’t “any definitive discussion of Gadot’s Wonder Woman continuing with the new DC Universe,” Variety’s sources said.
These denials stop short of completely ruling out Gadot making future appearances as the character. However Gadot managed to get the wrong end of the stick, it seems as though she was not shown the door as definitively as Henry Cavill, who made it very public that his days as Superman were over after his own meeting with Gunn and Safran, and whose role has already been recast. Gadot could potentially return as Wonder Woman under the DC Elseworlds banner, where non-canon takes on DC characters such as Robert Pattinson’s Batman and Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker will live.
Gadot’s inclusion in an official DC Universe project isn’t entirely out of the question, either. Gunn and Safran aren’t shutting the door on all DC projects that predate their reboot of the universe: Gunn has already said that Xolo Maridueña, star of this month’s Blue Beetle movie, will continue to play the part in the new DC Universe. But Gadot’s Wonder Woman, as a key figure in DC movies from the Zack Snyder era, might present more issues for the new regime, even in a cameo role — and Variety’s sources do seem to want to draw a line between her and the new DC Universe.
Either way, it seems unlikely Gadot will return to the role soon — and a third Wonder Woman movie is now definitely off the table. Wonder Woman 3 had been in development with Patty Jenkins, director of the first two films, but reports of its cancellation emerged in December 2022, as Gunn and Safran were preparing to unveil their vision for the future of the DCU. At the time, Jenkins confirmed that she had not walked away from the project, but that she had been told there was no way it was moving forward. It seems that she, at least, got the message.
