Is WONDER WOMAN Going To Be A Period Piece?

Warner Brothers has been in development on a film featuring DC Comics heroine Wonder Woman for several years now. While just two weeks ago the studio announced that they would finally get the film onto screens on June 23, 2017, since it was announced as part of the studio’s overall slate of interconnected superhero films I think we all assumed that the film’s plotline would spin out of her preceding appearance in 2016’s Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice. But if a report originating at Bleeding Cool is correct, it looks as if the Wonder Woman is actually going to take a step back in time.

According to BC’s sources –

[T]he film will spends the first half on Paradise Island with warring Amazon factions vying for control.

An arrival of a man on the island changes that status quo, as he asks the Amazons for help. Not necessarily Steve Trevor either…

Because when Wonder Woman joins him on his return to the world of Man, we all discover that it is the 1920s. And the film will then show Diana exploring that world – a world where women have only just got the vote – from her… unique perspective.

A planned sequel would then take place during World War II in the thirties and forties. This of course was the period that the seventies TV show began in, before shifting to the then-modern day.

And a threequel would then take place in the modern day, with the Justice League Of America.

A very interesting development, and one that would allow the studio to explore some of the history of their superhero world. And perhaps in the sequel allow them to dig deep into DC Comics roster of World War Two characters from soldiers like Sargent Rock of Easy Company to superheroes that are specifically tied to the era.

I am sure that there are some who are looking at this and thinking that Warners is just aping Marvel Studios’ 2011 Captain America: The First Avenger by placing the film in the past. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. But the setting of the 1920s, twenty years before First Avenger‘s WW2 setting, certainly lends itself to exploring the idea of the character of Diana as a feminist icon over the decades and that has me intrigued.

During the years that Warners had been developing Wonder Woman, they had a number of distinctly different takes on the character. One screenplay, written by Matthew Jennison and Brent Strickland, was set during World War Two, but had previously been rejected as being potentially too expensive to make. Out of the various drafts that I have had the opportunity to read, it was also the best.

Currently, Warner Brothers is searching for a director for the film, with their attention focused on female candidates.