Warner Bros. gaming division is a confusing beast. On the one hand it published the legendary Batman: Arkham series, the Mordor titles and brought to market Hogwarts Legacy which has wound up selling over 34 million copies. And on the other hand, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League was a massive flop costing hundreds of millions, and the company just shut down the live-service Multiversus.
In other words, despite publishing one of the biggest singleplayer games of all time, the company is actually struggling. As Warner Bros. Chief Executive Officer David Zaslav said during the latest financial call, their games are ““substantially underperforming.” So what have they got coming out? Well, there’s the Wonder Woman game which was first announced three years ago and must surely be about ready, right? Well, about that.
Jason Schreier of Bloomberg has done a journalism again and revealed some key information about the project. According to Jason, Wonder Woman “has struggled to coalesce, according to people familiar with the project.”
He goes on to state that the game was rebooted in early 2024 and switched directors, which is it ” is still years away from release, if it ever makes it to market.”
But that isn’t all, because according to Schrier, the game has “cost more than $100 million” so far. If it indeed was rebooted and depending one exactly how much of the initial design was scrapped, in today’s market that $100 million could easily double over the coming years, or even potentially triple.
There’s also the issue of whether the game will even be relevant by the time it releases. Wonder Woman’s popularity has ebbed and flowed over the years, arguably peaking years ago when her two standalone movies released in 2017 and 2020. Now the DC cinematic universe is being rebooted under James Gunn and while it seems like a new Wonder Woman is likely to occur, there’s nothing concrete, meaning the game might be put out without anything else to help it.
But Wonder Woman may not be entirely within an ally, as her Justice League comrade Batman might be making a comeback. Jason also mentioned in his report that “Rocksteady is looking to return to Batman for a single-player game” but also states that this project is also years away from releasing.
But there may be hope yet as Warner Bros. gaming division is getting new leadership. David Haddad was announced to be stepping down in January. Despite the company’s problems, it does have access to powerful IP, and is actively working on a new Hogwarts Legacy game.
“According to interviews with two dozen current and former Warner Bros. employees, a lack of a strong, cohesive vision during Haddad’s reign — a tumultuous period in which Warner Bros. struggled through multiple reorganizations — led to years of ineffectual trend-chasing and wasted development time.” said Jason. “Along the way, once-revered studios under the Warner Bros. umbrella have taken reputational hits, lost key staff members and burned through hundreds of millions of dollars.”