Wonder Woman: all the news and trailers from the next big DC film

Like most based-on-a-true-story biographical films, Angela Robinson’s Professor Marston and the Wonder Women is only loosely connected to actual events. Psychology professor William Moulton Marston (played by Luke Evans in the film) did create the comic book character Wonder Woman, and he did live in a polyamorous relationship with his wife Elizabeth Marston (Rebecca Hall) and their grad student Olive Byrne (Bella Heathcote). Everything else in the movie, though, is up for grabs.

Robinson frames her film around the explicit war against Marston’s life and work. But in spite of complaints about the bondage in the Wonder Woman comics, Marston was never seriously threatened with being fired from the title he created. The comics sold too well, and he was too skilled at defending his work. In spite of the sultry lie detector scenes in the film, the lie detector Marston created never worked, and certainly wasn’t instrumental in getting William, Elizabeth, and Olive to declare their feelings for each other. So far as anyone knows, no neighbor ever wandered into the Marston household and found Marston, Elizabeth, and Olive having kinky costumed sex. William and Elizabeth didn’t subsequently split up with Olive, even temporarily. And as the photos over the closing credits prove, Elizabeth, Olive, and William did not look anything like glamorous movie stars.

There’s no denying that writer-director Angela Robinson has excellent timing. Her new film, Professor Marston and the Wonder Women, about the creation of the Wonder Woman comic book character, has been in the works for years. But it finally came to fruition the same year Warner Brothers’ Wonder Woman climbed the box office charts and made a huge splash for the character. Interest in Wonder Woman and her strange, colorful, bondage-filled history is at an all-time high, and Robinson’s seems poised to fill in the gap. The movie comes to theaters disguised as a lively, colorful origin story for a colorful character — a conventional biopic about a creator whose fierce lady superhero character met a prudish, scolding response when he introduced her in 1941.

But Professor Marston is in no way conventional. Robinson is a gay black writer-director whose previous films, the action-comedy D.E.B.S. and the Disney adventure Herbie Fully Loaded, both focused on adventurous female leads who felt subversively smuggled into theaters. And while her new film looks at Wonder Woman creator William Moulton Marston (played by Luke Evans), it’s even more interested in the women who shaped his life: his wife Elizabeth (Rebecca Hall) and their lover Olive (Bella Heathcote). The movie tracks how William and Elizabeth Marston’s psychological studies led to his theories about the emotionally curative powers of bondage and discipline, which William put directly into his early Wonder Woman comics. And it explores their relationship with Olive, particularly around Elizabeth’s fears of being judged, and William’s fight to get his theories recognized. It’s an unusual story, but Robinson keeps it lively and compelling. She has a light, playful hand with the material, and the movie is alternately erotic, funny, and fiercely supportive of sexual freedom and exploration.

Wonder Woman is a feminist icon. She’s also a sex symbol. She’s a wish-fulfillment power fantasy and a sexual fantasy, which is part of why she’s had such lasting appeal to fans all over the gender spectrum. But her sex appeal has been a consistent cause of consternation for critics, fans, and casual passersby since her earliest days as a comic-book character.

Director James Cameron is the latest commenter to claim there’s a contradiction there, that feminism and sexiness are somehow at odds. In a furor-raising recent interview at the Guardian, he said that in Patty Jenkins’ new Wonder Woman film, the character is “just an objectified icon, and it’s just male Hollywood doing the same old thing!” He claimed it was a “step backwards” from his own Terminator franchise, starring Linda Hamilton, who he described as “not a beauty icon.” That’s an odd thing to say. Hamilton’s Sarah Connor is a wonderful, powerful character, but she certainly didn’t challenge Hollywood standards of attractiveness.

With a filmography full of characters like Aliens’ Ellen Ripley and The Terminator’s Sarah Connor, James Cameron is often credited with making movies that feature strong female leads. When recently asked about the tremendous success of Wonder Woman, however, his response came off as rather dismissive.

In an interview with The Guardian, he said, amidst a long and confusing conversation about “strong, independent women” in film and his personal life, that he did not care for the film or its reception. “All of the self-congratulatory back-patting Hollywood’s been doing over Wonder Woman has been so misguided,” he said. “She’s an objectified icon, and it’s just male Hollywood doing the same old thing! I’m not saying I didn’t like the movie but, to me, it’s a step backwards.”

Fans of Spanish actress Elena Anaya might have had a hard time recognizing her in Patty Jenkins’ superhero sensation Wonder Woman. Anaya is a headliner in Spain, with starring roles in films including Pedro Almodóvar’s The Skin I Live In, the drama They Are All Dead, and the ghost story Fragile. She’s become an international star as well, in the UK’s Swung, France’s high-profile criminal profile Mesrine: Killer Instinct and Mesrine: Public Enemy #1, and Chile’s The Memory of Water. To people around the world, she’s a memorable face.

But in Wonder Woman, that face is largely covered by prosthetics and makeup, and Anaya’s intensity only comes through in her eyes. She plays villain Dr. Maru, aka Dr. Poison, the savage chemist pioneering an explosive new form of mustard gas that may win World War I for the German forces. It’s a comparatively small role for her, but it’s a central one. She puts a face — a badly damaged face, covered with prosthetic plates — on the war’s weapons of mass destruction. She brings an eerie sensitivity and soulfulness to her acts of mass murder. And in her best scene, she coldly confronts the film’s love interest, Chris Pine, as he infiltrates a German party as a spy. I recently talked to Anaya about the fantasies she built around Wonder Woman’s most enigmatic character, Dr. Maru’s future prospects in a Wonder Woman sequel, and how she got those hideous facial scars. Also: how Dr. Maru is both an ant and a snake.

The numbers are in for Wonder Woman’s first weekend, and they’re even bigger than the projections.

With $100.5 million in North America and an additional $122.5 million internationally, Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman can boast the biggest-ever opening weekend for a film directed by a woman, Variety reports. With a budget of $150 million (which it has already more than recouped), Wonder Woman was already the most expensive film ever directed by a woman.

Along with Batman and Superman, Wonder Woman is a pillar of what’s known among fans as the DC Trinity. At 75 years old, she’s one of the oldest and most enduring of all superheroes, but where her counterparts have been featured in numerous TV shows and movies, Diana of Themyscira hasn’t ever been as lucky. Up until this weekend’s Wonder Woman, she’s only appeared solo in one successful TV series, one failed TV movie, and one direct-to-video animated film. As a matter of fact, as Polygon’s Susana Polo noted, the first major theatrical release Wonder Woman was even in was 2014’s The Lego Movie.

It all goes to show how studios, thanks to a whole lot of laziness, have struggled to figure out what to do with Wonder Woman on-screen. These days, you can watch Diana be amazing on shows like Justice League and Young Justice. But there were so many missteps along the way.

Last week, after the Alamo Drafthouse theater in Austin, Texas announced that it would host a screening of Wonder Woman limited to women (with proceeds benefiting Planned Parenthood), the men’s-rights types of the world lost it. The screening, just one of dozens of Wonder Woman screenings scheduled at the Drafthouse, was deemed “sexist,” “illegal,” “tacky,” and “bigoted.” After New York City’s Drafthouse location announced similar screenings, one man filed a civil rights complaint against Alamo Drafthouse. (And, for vague reasons, Carson Daly.)

It’s a run-of-the-mill misogynist hissy fit, similar to those we saw around Paul Feig’s women-led Ghostbusters last summer, or George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road — centered on Charlize Theron’s Imperator Furiosa instead of Max — the summer before. But this time, instead of once again picking up a metaphorical machete and attempting to hack through male rage with appeals based in empathy, logic, or historical context, the unified response to the Wonder Woman backlash has so far been “U mad, bro?” It feels like a collective relaxation of muscles we really do need for more important things, and it feels good.

The new Wonder Woman film has most of what Wonder Woman fans would expect from a cinematic adaptation of her comics. There’s Paradise Island, the distant utopia where women warriors live and fight together, sans men. There’s the magic golden lasso which compels people to tell the truth. There are the magical bracelets that deflect bullets (and the occasional World War I shell, since the film is set in that era). Steve Trevor, brave airman in need of rescue? Yep. Etta Candy, jovial sidekick? She’s there. Improbable CGI superfeats? Of course.

Fans of the classic comics may miss a few iconic bits of the Wonder Woman mythos, though. Wonder Woman has some funny repartee, falling in line with Marvel Cinematic Universe films: at one point, Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman archly explains to Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) that men are necessary for biological reproduction, but not for pleasure. But while there are jokes, the comics’ more whimsical elements have been shelved. There’s no invisible plane. (At least not as far as audiences can tell.). And the Amazons in the film ride normal, everyday horses, rather than giant battle kangaroos.

Ever since the DC Extended Universe launched with 2013’s Man of Steel, it’s been troubled and contentious. DC Comics’ attempt at a revitalized, unified superhero film franchise has faced nonstop comparisons with Marvel’s more long-running and critically acclaimed cinematic universe, and it’s consistently come out worse in comparison. Warner Bros.’ DC films (to date: Man of Steel, Batman v Superman, and Suicide Squad) have been dour, sullen, narratively messy, and heavily criticized for their particularly fetishized and unrestrained use of violence. They’ve also been distressingly obsessed with forcing their heroes through protracted existential crises instead of letting them be heroes. (Or, in the case of Suicide Squad, reluctant anti-heroes.)

So the impressive thing about the series’s latest installment, Wonder Woman, isn’t that it abandons this approach. It’s that it embraces and redefines it, making it clear that it’s possible to wallow in the emotional troubles that have defined DCEU movies, and still have fun. Wonder Woman has a lightness and wryness that none of its DC predecessors could claim, but it’s still about philosophical crisis and a hero trying to find an identity. It’s still exploring the DCEU’s favorite themes: whether mankind truly deserves heroes, and whether it’s possible for one person to justly wield immense power. Director Patty Jenkins (Monster) and screenwriter Allan Heinberg explore those themes with a humanity that the franchise’s previous films were lacking. They take their protagonist’s natural superiority for granted, making it a joy instead of a heavy burden. In their hands, Wonder Woman questions her place in the world, but not her inherent identity. And it makes all the difference to the story.

With the Wonder Woman movie on the immediate horizon, and early word of mouth looking promising, it’s no surprise that we’re seeing an onslaught of Wonder Woman-related videos hitting the internet, from essays on her importance to costume breakdowns to cheeky ads linking the character with other parts of the greater DC Comics continuum. Now Nerdist is in on the act, with a parody musical mash-up turning three actors into a variety of iterations on Wonder Woman throughout the decades.

The video was directed by Nerdist supervising creative producer Andrew Bowser, who also helmed the Beauty And The Beast / Migos music parody “Belle And Boujee,” and the Spider-Man / Bruno Mars video “That Spidey Life.” The latest video puts Wonder Woman-related lyrics into six “classic feminist anthems,” from Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Are Made For Walkin’” to Beyoncé’s “Run The World (Girls).” It starts in an intimate setting, with Nerdist News host Jessica Chobot dressed as Lynda Carter in the 1970s TV series Wonder Woman, singing directly into the camera. But as it moves through the eras to the present, it expands until actor Ciara Renee — a Broadway performer who’s played Hawkgirl on The Flash, Arrow, and Legends of Tomorrow — is leading a squad of Wonder Women in formation, evoking Beyoncé in “Run The World (Girls).”

Man at Arms: Reforged is a video series that follows a team of blacksmiths that puts together a new video of some type of sword or weapon from various games, movies, or television shows every couple of weeks. Their latest project is a replica of Wonder Woman’s shield, and the results are stunning.

The team starts off by cutting out a round piece of steel, and proceeds to heat and hammer it into the right shape. There are other components that they have to create, such as buckles, which they mold in clay and cast in bronze. This build is a bit more complicated than the usual swords that they showcase, and it’s fun to watch them change up their routine for a new challenge.

A new trailer for DC’s Wonder Woman has hit the web, showing off Diana Prince’s training as an Amazon warrior on Themyscira.

We’ve seen Diana taking part in the First World War in earlier glimpses of the film, but in this new trailer, her training and growing powers are front and center. We see her as a young girl learning about the world around her, discovering her powers when she’s older, and her journey to London to help save the world. Directed by Patty Jenkins, Wonder Woman is the next film set in the DC Extended Universe, starring Gal Gadot as Diana Prince / Wonder Woman.

The latest trailer for Wonder Woman just landed, and here we see Diana (Gal Gadot) looking back on how ugly a world at war can be. Here, she sees men invade Themyscira, and feels the pull to help stop “the war to end all wars.” Unsurprisingly, she’s more than ready for it.

Wonder Woman, directed by Patty Jenkins, is the next film set in the DC Extended Universe, and will follow Diana of Themyscira (Gal Gadot) as she joins the fight during World War I. The movie comes at a time when the character’s profile is only increasing — Wonder Woman was just made an honorary ambassador for the UN, despite some pushback from critics. There’s a real chance that this effort will put Warner Bros.‘s superhero movie efforts back on track after the failures that were Batman v Superman and Suicide Squad. We won’t know for sure until it hits theaters on June 2nd, 2017.

With Wonder Woman due out next summer, the Warner Bros. PR machine is kicking into high gear to promote the film. As part of its San Diego Comic-Con ramp up, the studio revealed the exciting plot synopsis: an epic Wonder Woman origin story set during World War I. But it’s the writing team behind that story that’s making headlines. Three men — DC Films co-chief Geoff Johns, screenwriter Allan Heinberg, and DC Extended Universe architect Zack Snyder — wrote for the film. Not one woman was named as being a part of the writing process.

That only men penned both the story and script is a big disappointment. That might be de rigueur for most Hollywood films, but Wonder Woman is different. Warner Bros. is attempting to launch a massive cinematic universe on the shoulders of DC Comics’ iconic characters, while also being mindful of calls for diversity in front of and behind the camera. Wonder Woman happens to be the first superhero movie in years to feature a woman in the title role. That’s an important milestone in this particular moment in film history. That a woman didn’t have a hand in telling her story puts a black mark on that otherwise noteworthy achievement.

Gal Gadot’s portrayal of Wonder Woman was one of the few highlights of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and now her standalone movie will be coming out sooner than originally anticipated. Variety reports that Warner Bros. has moved up the release date of Wonder Woman to June 2nd, 2017, three weeks earlier than its original release date.

Along with Wonder Woman, Warner Bros. is pushing Jungle Book: Origins back more than a year to October 19th, 2018. That film, which is being directed by mo-cap performer Andy Serkis, will likely benefit from the additional time in post-production to focus on the extensive visual effects work (and to distance itself from Disney’s latest adaptation, which is hitting theaters this month).

In line with some early speculation, Warner Bros. has just set official release dates for two superhero blockbusters: Wonder Woman and Justice League Part One. First, Wonder Woman will premiere June 23rd, 2017, with Justice League set for a November 17th date later in the same year.

Warner Bros. has already slowly been laying the tracks for its interconnected universe of DC superhero films, which kicked off with Man of Steel in 2013. Two more will soon follow, as Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice is set for a March 25th premiere this year, and Suicide Squad is set for August 5th. Wonder Woman, played by Gal Gadot, will make her first appearance in Batman V. Superman, and several DC heroes will make appearances in Justice League.

When Marvel’s Ant-Man lost its director last year, it took the comic company weeks to find a replacement. For rival DC Comics and its big-screen version of Wonder Woman, there’s no such problem. The movie’s director, Michelle MacLaren, quit over creative differences just two days ago, but DC and studio Warner Bros. have already found someone to step into the breach. Enter Patty Jenkins, who The Hollywood Reporter says has agreed to a deal to direct the big-screen adaptation of the iconic comic character, due for release in 2017.

It’s not clear what the exact issues were, but getting MacLaren to direct Wonder Woman had been something of a coup for the studio. The director-producer has been part of some of the very best television made in recent years, directing episodes of Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, and Better Call Saul. Gal Gadot is still attached to star in Wonder Woman, which is slated for release in 2017. Gadot will be making her first appearance as the character next year in Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice.

If MacLaren is interested in pursuing another superhero franchise, she’ll certainly have options. According to The Wrap she’s already rumored for Captain Marvel, the 2018 film that will be the first film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to focus on a female superhero as the lead character. The studio is said to be specifically looking for a female director to tackle the project, and has recently signed writers Meg LeFauve (Inside Out) and Nicole Perlman (Guardians of the Galaxy) to write the film.

Wonder Woman has finally found a director. According to The Hollywood Reporter, television director Michelle MacLaren has signed on to develop and direct the film, due out in 2017 with Gal Gadot in the title role. Batman v. Superman director Zack Snyder has been tapped to produce. The decision makes MacLaren the first female director to helm a tentpole superhero film in recent years, and only the second overall.

Warner Bros. reportedly conducted a long search for a female director for Wonder Woman, a movie about (arguably) comics’ most important female superhero. MacLaren is ultimately a solid choice — the Emmy Award winner has worked on popular shows like Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead, and Games of Thrones during the course of her career. MacLaren will be the first woman in DC’s upcoming crop of films to direct. The last female director in the genre was Lexi Alexander, who delivered Punisher WarZone in 2008.