Details have emerged about the recently cancelled Wonder Woman game with multiple sources explaining its beginnings to stopped development. WB Bros. Games announced it had just shutdown three of its gaming studios which included Monolith Productions who had been working on a Wonder Woman game. Monolith had been known for many games over roughly three decades.
Monolight Production game highlights – Blood (1997), Aliens vs Predator (1999), AvP 2 (2003), Tron 2.0 (2003), F.E.A.R (2005), The Matrix Online (2005), F.E.A.R. 2 (2009), Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor (2014), Middle-Earth Shadow of War (2017), and many more.
From original to WW
Monolith was known for producing sequels to its games but also changing up different gameplay mechanices along the way. Its Nemesis System used in its two later Middle-Earth titles garnered praise from gamers where players would encounter enemies via a ranking system during their campaign. Monolith had begun work on a new IP following the Middle-earth games but was then retasked to develop the Wonder Woman game instead and planned to integrate the system into it. This led to a number of high level position departures from the Monolith team while those remaining were left with the new goal of developing the Wonder Woman game.
Jason Schreier (Bloomberg) explained on a Kinda Funny Games Daily podcast (via VGC) that “During this time, it’s kind of clear to people at Warner Bros that this game is not going to happen, because people at Warner Bros are not interested in new IP,” and added “Warner Bros decides it’s not interested in new IP and decides they (Monolith) are going to make a Wonder Woman game.”
Schreier further clarifies that the Nemesis System would change directions in that instead of enemies, it would be allies who would befriend Princess Diana via a ranking system. However, Monolith was having difficulty in making that happen which eventually led to Warner Bros. Games deciding to reboot the game and abandon the system in favor of another blockbuster game franchise. On a side note, Eurogamer has reported that WB Games now the Nemesis System locked away via a patent that doesn’t expire until 2036.
“They rebooted it to be more of a God of War style more traditional action game, by then it was kind of too late.”
– Jason Schreier speaking on Kinda Funny Games Daily (via VGC)
Not just a great game but. . .
More details have emerged from comic book writer Gail Simone who had served as lead consultant for the game. Gail shared via social media how the team put in eveything they could into making what should have been a definitely great Womder Woman game.
The game was gorgeous and expansive. It was beautiful to look at. I am not going to give details for a number of reasons, but every effort was made to make this not just a great game, but a great WONDER WOMAN game. A showpiece epic.
— Gail Simone 💙💛 (@GailSimone) February 26, 2025
It was a dream come true. Wonder Woman had a dream team and they put their all into it. They made sure it had WW and DC lore on every aspect of the game.
— Gail Simone 💙💛 (@GailSimone) February 26, 2025
It was a thrill and honor to work with them.
Despite reports of the team’s difficulties in adapting a changed style of the Nemesis system it sounds as if they had made a lot of progress before being told to scrap it to make a GoW clone. Sadly though, it shouldn’t come as a complete surprise this game got canceled as WB CEO David Zaslav is well known for putting things on the chopping block to cut costs and the game had already reportedly exceeded $100 million in development costs.