Summary
- Monolith began work on a new IP codenamed Legacy following the launch of Middle-earth: Shadow of War.
- However, Warner Bros. cancelled this game in 2021, causing the “entire leadership team” to quit.
- This left Monolith in a bind. It had to rebuild the studio and start from scratch on a new game.
Earlier this week, Warner Bros. Games announced that it had cancelled Wonder Woman and shuttered developer Monolith among two other developers. However, the studio was reportedly already “eviscerated” years ago, back in 2021.
After Middle-earth: Shadow of War was released in 2017, Monolith wanted to move away from The Lord of the Rings to do something original. So, it began work on a new IP codenamed “Legacy”, a procedural narrative game experimenting further with the ideas behind the Nemesis system. However, Warner Bros wasn’t, and still isn’t, interested in new IP, which allegedly caused a “stand-off” between the two parties.
“Warner Bros. knows it’s not gonna allow this to happen. Monolith has a lot of sway and clout because you have these guys who’ve been working on these games for a while, had a lot of success with the Middle-earth games, and so they feel they have the autonomy and the clout to do what they want,” Jason Schreier explained on the Kinda Funny Podcast. “There are some attempts here and there to squeeze IPs into Legacy, but it doesn’t quite work out […] Cut to 2021, the spring of that year — March or April, something like that — word comes down, ‘Hey, this isn’t gonna happen.'”
Legacy’s Cancellation Led Monolith Leadership To Resign
As a result of Legacy’s cancellation, “Monolith’s leadership team — the entire leadership team — quits. Every single director.” Many of these, along with those working under them, would go on to form Cliffhanger Games under EA, and are now working on Black Panther. However, that left Monolith struggling to stay afloat. It hadn’t released a game in five years, but needed to start from scratch on a new project while simultaneously rebuilding its entire leadership team.
Monolith is essentially eviscerated at this point.
So, shortly after Legacy’s cancellation in 2021, Monolith agreed to develop a Wonder Woman game. Just a few months later, at The Game Awards in December, it announced the project to the public with a CG trailer, which Schreier speculated was in part to drive recruitment, given the many resignations that had just taken place, while also buying more development time.
Reportedly, there was a debate about whether to use Unreal Engine, but Monolith stuck with its internal studio tech. But the loss of engineering talent who helped make the tech in the first place made it “trickier” to work with the internal engine.
Coupled with rebuilding the studio, while desperately trying to get a game out of the door in the wake of a disastrous year for Warner Bros., with Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, MultiVersus, and Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions all losing money, Monolith struggled. Unfortunately, that led to Wonder Woman’s cancellation and the studio’s recent closure.
Monolith
- Date Founded
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October 25, 1994
- Parent Company
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Monolith Productions
- Headquarters
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Kirkland, Washington, United States