Movies News

Whedon bows out of 'Wonder Woman'

By Stone Martindale Feb 3, 2007, 19:52 GMT

Joss Whedon - © Glenn Harris / Photorazzi

Director and Producer Joss Whedon announced Friday on his web site that he is no longer attached to write and direct the new big-screen adaptation of "Wonder Woman."

"It's pretty complicated, so bear with me," he wrote on his Web site under the heading, "Satin Tights No Longer." "I had a take on the film that, well, nobody liked. Hey, not that complicated."

Earlier this week, Warner Bros. and Silver Pictures bought a "Wonder Woman" spec script by newcomers Matthew Jennison and Brent Strickland, reported Variety. 

Sources allege the companies bought the spec script as a pre-emptive legal measure to take it off the market and protect them against any possible similarities between the script Whedon wrote and the one written by Jennison and Strickland.

That script will now serve as the replacement to Whedon's.

"Let me stress that everybody at the studio and Silver Pictures were cool and professional," Whedon wrote. "We just saw different movies, and at the price range this kind of movie hangs in, that's never gonna work. Non-sympatico. It happens all the time."

Whedon is known for developing strong female characters like Buffy the Vampire Slayer. 

Whedon's "Wonder Woman" according to MTV News, was set to tell the story drawing on "a lot of the mythos from the very oldest comics" and "ample" amounts of Greek mythology.

"There's been a lot of good runs on the comic," he said to MTV, "but there hasn't been ... [an] origin issue ... one you can plop down and say, 'Make this.' The story hasn't been toldplop down and say, 'Make this.' The story hasn't been told exactly the way it needs to be told in the movie, so I have to do a lot of legwork myself, and make it seem like I didn't, and make it seem natural to her world."

The new script is set during World War II, but Whedon's story was in modern times, to make her a "viable modern-day figure" and showcase her inability to fit into society. "She's a fish out of water. It's basically 'Splash,' " he joked. "I just took the script from 'Splash' and changed some of the names."

Whedon told MTV that the accesories to Wonder Woman were key story components. "The bracelets and the lasso are so much part of who she is and the journey she goes through," Whedon said to MTV. "They're not just cute and they're definitely not silly and she's not going to spin to change her clothes."

"This may have come back to bite me slightly, as I have struggled and struggled to get it done," Whedon told MTV News. "I've been whining about it quite a lot. I'd like to perhaps not be remembered for the whining."

In his post, Whedon said while he was disappointed that he was no longer affiliated with the project after all this time, he was also relieved that he wasn't in some "horrible limbo of development." "So I'm a free man," he wrote on his web site.

Whedon expressed his frustration to MTV news about being hounded over casting queries for the lead role: "I literally had lunch with a studio executive where I told him, 'It's driving me crazy, all everyone wants to know is who I'm casting, and I'm not finished with the script,' and he said, 'Yeah, so who are you going to cast?' 'And it's actually driving me crazy, where I have to seek therapy because of it.' 'So who do you want to cast? Come on, it's fun to play.' Oh my God, he won't stop. It's the only thing I ever get asked. I'm more tired of it than you can possibly imagine."