In development at Monolith Games, a long-in-the-works Wonder Woman adventure could be in trouble according to a new report, with $100m already spent on it.
It’s been almost four years since Warner Bros Games announced that a Wonder Woman videogame was in the works, and over a year since its developer, Monolith, denied that it was one of those always-online live service games.
According to a report, there’s a good reason for the radio silence: development hasn’t been going too smoothly on Monolith’s Wonder Woman. Over $100m has already been spent on its making, according to Bloomberg sources, and an earlier iteration of the game was abandoned and development re-started on a new concept.
The story is but one part of a wider series of calamities at Warner’s gaming division. Despite the number of big names in its portfolio (what we’re suppose we should call ‘IP’), the company has seen a number of commercial disappointments in recent years. Rocksteady Games spent years developing Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League, only for it to flop rather horrendously.
Similarly, Smash Bros-esque fighting game MultiVersus and fantastical sports title Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions have all led to millions in losses for Warner Bros Games. The bad news was such that David Haddad, the division’s long-time boss, admitted defeat and stepped down last month.
Monolith Games’ struggles with Wonder Woman make for particularly gloomy reading given the studio’s pedigree. Its reputation soared thanks to Middle-earth: Shadow Of Mordor, an open-world Tolkien simulator with an ingenious Nemesis system at its heart – in essence, in-game characters would remember the player’s actions and bear grudges over the deaths of their comrades. It was such a novel concept that Monolith (or its lawyers) put a patent on it.
Read more: The strange and complex world of patented game mechanics
The Nemesis system would, according to journalist Jason Schreier, have also provided the basis for Monolith’s Wonder Woman game, with the player – cast in the role of the superheroine – capable of making friends or mortal enemies depending on their actions. This iteration of the game was reportedly scrapped in favour of a more straightforward single-player structure.
Before Wonder Woman, Monolith was also said to be working on a project unconnected to any kind of licence, but this too was killed off after around three years in development. Wonder Woman was announced in 2021, the year that earlier title was cancelled.
Other studios under the Warner Bros banner have flailed about in similar patterns. WB Games Montreal was reportedly working on a Constantine game, but then it was scrapped; another project based on The Flash was also binned off when the 2023 film fizzled at the box office.
The whole Bloomberg report paints a dismal landscape of mismanagement and indecision, with untold sums of money spent on games nobody will ever see. It’s been seven years since Monolith last released a game; almost four years into development, Wonder Woman may be the next game to fall by the wayside.
Bloomberg even suggests that the wider Warner Bros company may wind down its gaming division in the near future, and licence its IPs (urgh) out to external studios – a tactic long since adopted by Disney.
We’ll keep you posted as we hear more.
