Variety reported today that Warner Bros. has been developing a Justice League movie on the downlow, written by Will Beall. So perhaps we’ll see Wonder Woman in that, if it ever gets made. Last time Warner Bros. tried to mount a Justice League movie, it all fell apart quite epicly, but maybe with the success of The Avengers they’ll have more motivation to get it done. It’s still early days yet, since Beall hasn’t even turned in a script yet.
More importantly, though, is that the article mentioned that a solo Wonder Woman film is in development. Again, we’ve heard this song before and, again, it all fell apart epicly, but at least they’re trying again. It’s also still in the beginning stages, but they’ve hired a writer: Michael Goldenberg.
Unfortunately, Goldenberg’s last feature film was Green Lantern, which suuuuuuuuuuucked. To be fair, he was only one of the four writers credited on the movie, but it was REALLY bad. I literally can’t think of any good parts where I could say “well maybe he wrote that bit.” The entire thing was terrible. Unless he was the guy who cast Mark Strong as Sinestro, the only good call in that whole movie, then I see nothing positive there.
His output before Green Lantern was sporadic but not awful, though:
Goldenberg wrote Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, released in 2007. People seemed to like that one, right? They all meld together in my mind. But they seemed to get better as they went along, and that one was about the middle or so I think. So that’s not bad.
Four years earlier, Goldenberg wrote the live version of Peter Pan, which was okay. Neither loved nor hated seemed to be the reaction. Plus Jason Isaacs was Captain Hook!! Jason Isaacs is super awesome. With Isaacs as Hook, Strong as Sinestro, and Ralph Fiennes as Voldemort, maybe he’ll continue his trend and we’ll get a spectacularly well-cast villain in Wonder Woman.
Before that, Goldenberg adapted Contact in 1997. He does a lot of adapting. I guess Contact was okay too. Not great, not terrible.
So that’s not really an impressive track record. It’s not a terrible track record, apart from Green Lantern, but there’s nothing about his output that says “this dude should write Wonder Woman!!” the way that, say, Joss Whedon did. He’s only done a few things, so we don’t really have a good handle on him and maybe this is his dream job and he’ll nail it. But I’m not terribly optimistic.
Though really, I’m not terribly optimistic this movie will even get made in the first place. Wonder Woman properties have a tough time getting off the ground. It’s fun that the movie is in development, and I really hope something cool comes of it, but chances are very slim that it’ll work out, much less be any good.
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