Since the trailer to Wonder Woman 1984 was released last week, we’ve been about ready to time jump to summer 2020. If Diana Prince can do it between the 2017 blockbuster set in World War I and the fabulous ‘80s, we can too, right? But, apparently somewhere … the final cut of the new Wonder Woman is just sitting somewhere… five months in advance. Check out what writer/director Patty Jenkins recently said:
We’re done. The movie is done. Because it doesn’t come out for a few months, for the first time in my career (which is so great) I was able to say, ‘Hey guys, can you let me fiddle with this? Can you let me fiddle with that?’ So I’m fiddling but the movie is technically done.
Whoa. Wonder Woman 1984 is basically ready. Patty Jenkins could certainly teach Cats director Tom Hooper, who made the finishing touches to his movie musical the day before its premiere. It’s nice to hear the filmmaker plan ahead so well that she can take her time with making any slight shifts to the movie in the coming months. Jenkins continued with these words:
[VFX shots are] 100% done. ... There were even these moments where I remember when we weren’t going to Comic-Con and somebody speculated, 'Maybe they don’t have enough action.' I was like, 'Ah, just wait. You’re going to see our action. You’re going to see ‘there’s no way we just did that’ as a reaction. That’s a year-long process.' Like just dying to show it.
That’s right… over the summer the filmmaker announced Wonder Woman 1984 would not be coming out to San Diego Comic-Con to show footage. It left some fans a little nervous about the state of the film. But, have no fear! According to Patty Jenkins, there’s tons of action to behold in the June release and it was a long process to get it ready. Jenkins and Gal Gadot instead debuted the trailer at Brazil Comic Con. During a roundtable interview at the con (via Collider), Jenkins was also asked about how long the first cut came to. In her words:
When I got in the editing room, it was hilariously parallel to the film. We knew it at the time, but it was too much of a good thing. I mean it was very hard. The first cut was 2 hours and 45 so it wasn’t like 3 hours and a half, I’m not that kind of filmmaker.
While other directors have made first cuts over three hours and such, when Patty Jenkin’s film was first assembled, Wonder Woman 1984 was already at a decent length for a superhero action film at 2 hours and 45 minutes. The 2017 film ran at 2 hours and 21 minutes so maybe Jenkins has another 20 minutes from the film to chop. She spoke more about the behind the scenes about the runtime with the following:
Everybody always wants you to make it shorter. So I have an idea and I’m like, 'Maybe it would make it shorter.' So anyway, we’re not going to officially say [a runtime] yet. However, it’s in a good territory. But it was interesting that so many scenes that we set out to shoot, then something great would happen and then we would expand upon it. Some things that were written to be very small, little moments turned into, 'But that’s so awesome!' So it’s hard when you end up with that situation. So the movie is exactly the same movie. Almost nothing has changed since the first cut except for trying to tighten and music and changing those things.
Sounds like she’s on top of it! There’s a ton of exciting aspects of Wonder Woman 1984 coming our way. Gal Gadot’s Diana Prince will be ditching her sword and shield for more use out of her lasso and an incredible Golden Eagle Armor. The movie will see the mysterious return of Chris Pine’s Steve Trevor after his death during WWI. Also Pedro Pascal will play Maxwell Lord and Kristen Wiig will be playing Cheetah.
Wonder Woman 1984 comes to theaters on June 5, as one of the many movies to look forward to in 2020.
