Summary
- The development of Wonder Woman was already in dire straits following the departure of Monolith’s leadership.
- The project suffered numerous setbacks and was eventually rebooted into a more traditional action-adventure.
- WB Games has suffered a recent string of failures.
It’s always incredibly disappointing to see a decades-old studio with a history of strong releases suddenly and unceremoniously shut down. Monolith Productions has existed since 1994 and has released an array of fantastic titles, such as The Operative: No One Lives Forever, FEAR and, of course, Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor.
However, according to Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, Monolith had been “eviscerated” long before its eventual closure. Speaking on the Kinda Funny Gamescast, Schreier revealed much of Monolith’s leadership departed after WB Games pushed the studio to stop work on an original IP codenamed Legacy and begin work on a Wonder Woman adaptation. A lot of these senior developers went on to form Cliffhanger Games, and are currently working on a Black Panther game.
A Slow Death
Predictably, with much of the leadership gone, Wonder Woman’s development cycle wasn’t a smooth one. According to Schreier, an internal debate on whether to use Monolith’s proprietary engine or switch to Unreal Engine ensued, with the team eventually settling on Monolith’s engine. Unfortunately, a lot of the developers who had the most experience with this engine left the studio to form Cliffhanger.
Monolith attempted to incorporate its procedural nemesis system from Shadow of Mordor into its Wonder Woman project, attempting to “reverse” the system, so non-player characters procedurally became your allies rather than enemies. This iteration of the game was ultimately scrapped, and Monolith decided to reboot development with a new game director. This new version of Wonder Woman was intended to be a “God of War-style more traditional action-adventure game,” but this shift in development came “too late” to save Monolith.
Monolith’s lack of progress on Wonder Woman was exacerbated by WB Games’ massive underperformance in 2024. $200 million was lost on Rocksteady’s Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, while Multiversus and Quidditch Champions failed to attract significant player bases. According to Schreier, $100 million had already been invested in Wonder Woman at the time of its cancellation.
As for WB Games’ other subsidiaries, Rocksteady is currently working on another singleplayer Batman game, WB Montreal is pitching a Game of Thrones game and TT Games is working on a Lego game (rumoured to be Harry Potter).
Warner Bros. Interactive
- Date Founded
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January 14, 2004
- Parent Company
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Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, Warner Bros. Games
- Headquarters
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Burbank, California, United States