Joss Whedon whipped free of Wonder Woman

Joss Whedon has announced via fan site Whedonesque that he’s off Warner Bros long-gestating Wonder Woman project.

Whedon was attached to the film a couple of years ago as a writer/director when producer Joel Silver offered him the job. But since then things have gone awfully quiet, with only the occasional hint from Whedon that he’s been trying to hash out an acceptable script for the studio bods. And now he’s officially ditched.

“You (hopefully) heard it here first: I'm no longer slated to make Wonder Woman,” he wrote in a statement. “Okay, stay calm and I'll explain as best I can. It's pretty complicated, so bear with me. I had a take on the film that, well, nobody liked. Hey, not that complicated. Let me stress first that everybody at the studio and Silver Pictures were cool and professional. We just saw different movies, and at the price range this kind of movie hangs in, that's never gonna work. Non-simpatico. It happens all the time. I don't think any of us expected it to this time, but it did. Everybody knows how long I was taking, what a struggle that script was, and though I felt good about what I was coming up with, it was never gonna be a simple slam-dunk.”

Whispers that there was serious trouble in Wonder-ville spread when Warner Bros announced that the studio had bought a second Wonder Woman script by newcomers Matthew Jennison and Brent Strickland that took a different approach to the modern-day version Whedon was planning.

Still, at least it frees the Serenity director up to focus on other projects – he has a thriller, Goners, in the script stage and has numerous comics on the bubble, including a season eight Dark Horse book for his pop culture TV favourite Buffy The Vampire Slayer.