Today, Warner Bros. announced not only is it canceling the highly anticipated upcoming game adaptation of Wonder Woman, but that its developer, critically acclaimed studio Monolith Productions, is shutting down.
The news comes by way of Kotaku, with the original report by Bloomberg, citing the cancellation and shutdown as due to a difficult 2024 for Warner Bros. gaming division. Last year saw games like Suicide Squad cost the company over $200 million and multiplayer games like Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions and MultiVersus—whose studio, Player First Games, was also shut down—fail to find an audience.
Warner Bros. Discovery head of global streaming and games JB Perrette reportedly sent the following in a staff email regarding the decision earlier today, citing a need to “regain our credibility and swagger at producing great games:”
“We need to and will do better for our fans first and foremost, and also because regaining that credibility is critical to us securing even more investment in Games in the years to come. Getting our swagger back happens one high quality game release at a time, and our financial credibility gets rebuilt one fiscal quarter at a time—delivering what we said we would deliver, and no big negative surprises.”
The Wonder Woman video game adaptation was originally announced four years ago during The Game Awards 2021, and Monolith Productions was developing it. Since its founding in 2004, the studio has created numerous award-winning games, including the F.E.A.R. and Middle-earth: Shadow of series.
With Monolith behind the helm, Wonder Woman was set to use the newly patented Nemesis system from the Middle-earth: Shadow of series, which focused on ever-evolving relationships with NPCs with each new interaction. After shutting down the studio and canceling the game, Warner Bros. stated they’ll be “refocusing development efforts on core intellectual properties.”
At the moment, there are no confirmed upcoming release under the Warner Bros. gaming division, though a sequel to the hit Harry Potter adaptation Hogwarts Legacy has at least been confirmed.