Patty Jenkins says she “never walked away” from Wonder Woman 3, offers update on Rogue Squadron
Patty Jenkins sets the record straight on Wonder Woman 3 and says her Star Wars movie is back on
Aux News Patty Jenkins
Last week, a report came out that Patty Jenkins’ third Wonder Woman movie had been canned, supposedly because whatever Jenkins had planned didn’t align with whatever ideas that new DC Studios bosses James Gunn and Peter Safran are working on for their new slate of superhero movies. Gunn sort of denied it, and then a second report came out that claimed it was Jenkins’ idea to walk away from the project after Warner Bros. Film Group co-CEOs Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy rejected her pitch and told her to take things in a different direction—supposedly leading to Jenkins saying that, among other things, they “didn’t understand the character,” that they “didn’t understand character arcs,” and that they didn’t understand Jenkins herself.
Now, Jenkins has released a lengthy statement on Twitter, and you can tell it’ll be a good one since it opens with “Sigh…” before digging into some recent developments in her career (including the decision to indefinitely delay her Star Wars movie, Rogue Squadron). Here’s the whole thing:
Jenkins says that Rogue Squadron was originally delayed because she wanted to focus on Wonder Woman 3, but she has since gone back to the project and is now actively developing it again. But as for Wonder Woman, Jenkins says that she “never walked away” from the project and was “open to considering anything” that DC Studios asked of her. She matter-of-factly says that, as far as he knew, “there was nothing I could do to move anything forward at this time,” adding, “DC is obviously buried in changes they are having to make, so I understand these decisions are difficult right now.”
The rest of Jenkins’ post is about the great legacy of Wonder Woman and how she doesn’t want her “beautiful journey” with Diana Of Themyscira to “land on a negative note.” She says she has “loved and been so honored” to make these two Wonder Woman movies, and she hopes the character and her legacy have “an amazing future ahead, with or without me.” She also highlights Gal Gadot, who—as far as we know—will stay on as the character even if Jenkins doesn’t keep directing Wonder Woman movies, with Jenkins saying that Gadot “is the walking embodiment of Wonder Woman in real life and a better person than the world can imagine.”
Basically, she took the high road and did a hell of a job with it. And also Rogue Squadron is back on. Let’s put Gal Gadot in an X-Wing!
68 Comments
WW84 was average as fuck and such a disappointment. Good news that Rogue Squadron is back in active development again. I’m looking forward to seeing that.
WW84 was average as fuck and such a disappointment.Well, that’s awfully charitable of you.
Well, coming from somebody who loved the first one: he’s not wrong..
It wasn’t as bad as a Scott Morrison press conference but it was up there.Poorly written and thought out. I was so keen on it beforehand. That first trailer with Blue Monday and the 80s aesthetic looked tight as fuck.Then the film turned up and was just shit.I’ve revisited the first one and I don’t think it holds up, especially its third act.There’s some great bits, like the no man’s land section but there’s so much other stuff which is underwhelming. It’s a solid 2.5-3 out of five.
That Blue Monday remix is awesome – have listened to a few other remixes that the artist did and they’re all pretty solid but that’s the best one.
It sure is. I’ve got it on my phone and listen to it occasionally. It’s great.
Just because I’m Australian, you’re assuming I know who this ‘Scott Morrison’ is. Nope, got no memory of who that is, none whatsoever.
Hahaha.I’ve been delighted watching him get humiliated constantly over the past six months.The new Niki Sava book takes him to town pretty fucking hard and his appearance at the Royal Commission today has been brutal. He’s such a fuckwit.
That’s ex-Prime Minister scottmorrison.
The ex-Prime Minister. He was also the Minister for health, finance, home affairs, treasury and industry, science, energy and resources.
He’s the guy who shat himself at a McDonalds in Engadine.
I am excited to learn that people who were disappointed by WW84 went back to the first Wonder Woman and realized that it was overhyped well past its competency.
(It and Captain Marvel were kind of one two punch of films I really wanted to be good because fuck yeah female leads that are just formulaic nothings that voice a kind of centrist, anodyne feminism that fit comfortably into the status quo. Honestly it’s why I found Black Widow so refreshing and fun, and managed to be far more feminist without any scenes with men having their monocles pop-off and saying ‘well I say: ladies doing things? unheard of harumph harumph.’ Also Captain Marvel was the worst -lit Marvel film until Wakanda Forever. This isn’t relevant, I’m just peeved about it.)
Why is it that people are more forgiving/charitable towards in than they would be other films?
WW84 with CGI as bad as Catwoman which was made decades earlier
Calling it average IS charitable.
I’m looking forward to Rogue Squadron, but I’d be looking forward to it even more if they announced it would revolve around Wedge Antilles.
We need the team-up of Wedge and Hohass Ekwesh.
Yeah, I’d rather see Wraith Squadron in action, even though I do love Rogue Squadron.
Yub yub, Commander!
yeah i think even calling it average is pretty generous.
I mean, it sounds like DC effectively put WW3 on hold (either because they strategically decided to not prioritize it, or maybe just that higher-ups, possibly Gunn et. al. didn’t have time to deal with it at the moment) and PJ was like, ok, well, I guess I’ll go work on Rogue Squadron again?But even with the “facts” here there’s a lot of vagueness and missing information. Which I don’t blame her for, there’s plenty of valid reasons to be vague. “Don’t throw me under the bus, but I’m not gonna throw anyone else under the bus either” seems to be the theme here.
Long story short: We, the people not directly involved in this, don’t have a fucking clue what’s really happening and should probably keep quiet. (yeah, right)
Which ugly dork filled corner of the internet was blaming her for WW3 not going forward? It was pretty plainly reported that DC passed on her script treatment and weren’t going forward with the production. Presumably that falls at the feet of Gunn and Safran, and maybe Zaslov if there’s a directive to limit the amount of movies in production until WB is out from under their crippling debt a bit more.
DC movies is what is going to help them get out of debt so that’s not the reason. DC is going to be going in a new direction, so the only Snyder tied movies that are going to get made are the ones that are well into production. So, until Gunn takes on his new role don’t expect any new projects to be approved.
People were blaming her for bring an asshole to the studio and refusing to take notes. Which in turn, left the third movie at a stand still.
If that was actually true, she could have left for “creative differences”, she’s get an EP credit for the third movie, and they’d hire a new writer/director to make it. They obviously have no desire to make a third wonder woman, or they’d keep it in development if only to make sure the contractual holds they have on Gal Gadot stay active.
“ugly dork filled corner of the internet”THE AV CLUB
We only talk about the White Lotus around here!
Hey, I may be ugly, and I may be a dork, but … uh … what was the third thing you said?
There was that recent gossip about her emailing the studio bosses a link to the Wikipedia entry on “character arc” when she didn’t like the direction they wanted the third film to take.
She didn’t deny doing that.
“It was pretty plainly reported that DC passed on her script treatment and weren’t going forward with the production.”
It was also specifically reported that she was told she could re-pitch and that she walked away instead.
Someone on another thread brought up Thor 2 and Iron Man 2 being disappointments yet those versions of those characters continuing to be prominent in the MCU, and it’s a good comparison to make IMO.Had the DCEU not been such a mess it’s entirely possible that a Jenkins-led WW3 would’ve been a fait accompli despite WW84 being an absolute train wreck.Now, granted, Alan Taylor didn’t direct anything in the MCU after Thor 2 and Jon Favreau had a lot more goodwill built up than Jenkins had at similar points in their franchise careers, but I could definitely seeing the powers that be in an alt-universe successful DCEU giving her another shot.
I liked the first WW, but the 2nd needed someone helping Director Jenkins on the script. It was kind of like watching Star Wars films that had someone helping Lucas with it, and those that didn’t have anyone curbing his worst story impulses.
Pfffft. Wake me up when someone finally does a Star Fox adaptation.
Only one actor for the role, despite it being cast:
Whatever you intended to post there, Kinja ate it. And probably farted in your general direction afterwards.
Which child actor is gonna throw their career away playing Slippy Toad?
that frog pilot sucked
I cannot be the only person who keeps reading that they cancelled “WW3″ and instinctively thinking “oh thank God, the last thing we need is another world war” before I remember the context.
Well, I’ve got bad news for you…
What a weird statement. Just make stuff.
Patty makes movies for patty to push her political agenda thats y her movies suck!
PoLiTiCaL aGeNdA!!!1!! Fuck off you dickless wonder.
It’s a pity to see her come back for Star Wars. We can all pretty much agree that Wonder Woman 2 was garbage and one could make a very strong case that the only reason that the first one was well received was because it was a shining gem of an island in the middle of an ocean of corn filled diarrhea.
If we’re not grading on a curve, the first movie was aggressively mediocre.
Hey Patty: Nobody thought that! WW2 was a trash film, mostly because of the script you wrote.
I was hoping Rogue One would be safe from horrible Patty Jenkins writing but I guess that’ll be another disappointing Star Wars film.
maybe she could just direct and let someone else write it
Yeah, the directing was just fine for the first one.
Except it wasn’t fine for the first one. The third act was a complete mess. The only really good part of the movie is the going over the top scene.
I thought the direction was fine, nothing special but not horrible.The whole third act is a huge mess but that’s more down to the writing I think.
The whole third act is a huge mess but that’s more down to the writing I think. The final fight happening in the dark is a director’s decision. The script was also bad in the third act, but a climactic fight that happens in the dark is just a bad director.
Ok that’s fair. It’s a decision that a lot of directors seem to be making lately and, in the immortal words of Jay Sherman:
Hooray opinions!
AKA the only scene anyone remembers. They certainly don’t remember the opening 40 minutes of non-stop exposition until you’re beaten and bloody by goddamn ‘lore.’
I timed it while watching: I think it was something like 42 minutes before there is a single line of naturalistic dialogue.
so, did she email a wikipedia link about character arcs to the studio execs, yes or no?altho tbh i think the final straw was when she started lecturing DeLuca and Abdy about how Diana Prince and Steve Trevor comprise a dramaturgical dyad
“Never walked away” means they canned the project because they didn’t appreciate being condescended to about character arcs by someone who doesn’t understand character work.
Please don’t ever put Gal Gadot and Imagine that close to each other again.
Aww, c’mon! That was such a nice gesture in a really difficult time. As a poor person, seeing all those celebrities sing really inspired me to continue living my bleak, mansion-less existence.
Jenkins says that Rogue Squadron was originally delayed because she wanted to focus on Wonder Woman 3, but she has since gone back to the project and is now actively developing it again.
Has Disney said that?
The rest of Jenkins’ post is about the great legacy of Wonder Woman and how she doesn’t want her “beautiful journey” with Diana Of Themyscira to “land on a negative note.”
Then she shouldn’t have made WW84.
She also highlights Gal Gadot, who—as far as we know—will stay on as the character even if Jenkins doesn’t
Gods, I hope not.
with Jenkins saying that Gadot “is the walking embodiment of Wonder
Woman in real life and a better person than the world can imagine.”
No.
And also Rogue Squadron is back on.
1) Has Disney said that?
2) I don’t want Jenkins anywhere near Rogue Squadron after the shitshow that was WW84.
I thought Gadot, while not a great actress, was totally fine as Wonder Woman. But the script she was given in WW84 was so bad no actress could have elevated it all that much. As to Jenkin’s rant, it’s hard to tell why Diana’s beautiful journey needed to include her 70 year obsession with a guy she once knew for perhaps a week when the same story could have been told without it(and might have even had time to feature more than three scenes with actual Wonder Woman in it!). And definitely no negative notes at all to land on after she starts a non-consensual sexual relationship with an innocent man possessed by her boyfriend’s ghost.
Especially since she comes from a society of warrior women. You would think she would be better able to handle the death in battle of someone she cared about.
Gal Gadot always manages to impress me withhow little screen presence she has.
There is such a funny movie to be made about the behind-the-scenes machinations of a studio that just hysterically keeps announcing and cancelling enormous projects at a breakneck pace. Someone like Armando Iannucci could do wonders with that.
Dang, I was kinda hoping that Disney had replaced her as director of Rogue Squadron with Kathryn Bigelow.No offense to her, but it just doesnt feel like Jenkins has the inclination to make the sort of dick swinging fighter jock movie it needs to be.
I didn’t think Zero Dark Thirty-style tactical realist military porn was the bent people wanted from a Star War, but in retrospect I suppose that makes sense.If RS is just going to be Top Gun in space, though, sure that sounds fun. Make the smoldering gay subtext into text. Do it, Disney, you cowards!
Kathryn Bigelow also made The Hurt Locker. She does pretty good work at making movies about “men at war” that are exciting and fun but also gritty enough to be deeper than a shallow popcorn flick.It’s what the Rogue Squadron books deserve. They’re really good, and don’t deserve to be shit on with an unserious and weak adaptation that fundamentally doesn’t understand or like the values that made them so vital to their fans.
The thing is, social media has made a whole bunch of fairly boring, fairly mundane industry machinations into news. If it wasn’t for the fact that things get amplified and distorted and misinterpreted at an exponential rate these days, all this stuff would be totally unremarkable behind-closed-doors development stuff. The reporting and the gossip makes this stuff seem like more than it is. Directors and studios go back and forth on ideas, they don’t settle on a way forward until they do, and when they do they might take longer to settle on a deal, and quite often they don’t end up settling on a deal because they can’t come to an agreement. What of it?
Changes happening elsewhere in the org will have an effect on them too. It’s all just like… normal? There’s nothing to see here, honestly. It sucks that Jenkins has to respond on the defensive, but it also sucks that Gunn has to respond to clarify, because it sucks that there’s the presumption of a story here.
Honestly this is like if your weekly team meetings at work were suddenly publicly scrutinised. They’d take on all this weight and import that they weren’t supposed to have.
“Let’s put Gal Gadot in an X-Wing!”Let’s not
Let’s put Gal Gadot in an X-Wing!
Let’s um… not do that, please.