Wonder Woman 3

[Canada]

Wonder Woman 3 plans confirmed by director Patty Jenkins/Director Patty Jenkins was discussing Wonder Woman 1984 when she revealed a third chapter is incoming too. We may have a way to go yet before we can see Wonder Woman 1984, but director Patty Jenkins has delivered us some good news.

Speaking to Vanity Fair, the director revealed that she has a clear vision for the heroine's franchise. "I have pretty clear plans for Wonder Woman 3. "Whether I [direct] it or not, I see how her arc should end in my incarnation of Wonder Woman. I have great passion for that."

In regards to Chris Pine's surprise return as the presumed dead Steve Trevor in the upcoming Wonder Woman 1984, Jenkins also told AM to DM that his comeback "makes perfect sense".

"It's all incredibly important to the story. It makes perfect sense, that's all I can say."

Vanity Fair article

Did you know today is the anniversary of the day the Black Dahlia was killed?” Patty Jenkins asked me the moment she walked into the room. We are standing in the study of Sowden House, the labyrinthine Los Angeles mansion that once belonged to Dr. George Hodel, whom many (including his own son, a Los Angeles police detective) considered the prime suspect in the ghastly unsolved murder and mutilation of aspiring starlet Elizabeth Short, a.k.a. the Black Dahlia.

Dressed in an oversized black sweatshirt dress and neon yellow sneakers, Jenkins—best known for directing Wonder Woman and Monster—shudders slightly at the realization that she is doing an interview about her noir-ish TNT limited series, I Am the Night, exactly 72 years to the day that Short died, in the very spot where she might have been killed.

Jenkins executive produced and directed two episodes of I Am the Night, which was adapted by Sam Sheridan (Jenkins’s husband) from the memoir of Fauna Hodel. Raised by a black adoptive mother in small-town Nevada, Fauna (played in the series by India Eisley) went to Los Angeles in search of her biological family and stumbled onto a genealogical nightmare. She found herself linked by blood to Hodel (Jefferson Mays), a rich and debauched physician and art collector. In 1949, Hodel was arrested (and then acquitted, after a sensational trial) for raping his teenage daughter, Tamar. Jenkins met Fauna years ago for coffee, and spent many hours afterward trawling through the Internet looking for more information on the Hodels. “I was truly frightened in a way where I was like, ‘I can’t. I can’t. This is too dark,’” Jenkins said. She soon realized that the story had cultural resonance, too: aside from its connection to the legendary Black Dahlia murders, Jenkins said the story also inspired elements of the movie Chinatown. (After escaping from her father’s home, Tamar Hodel had become a mentor to Michelle Phillips, who would go on to sing with the Mamas & the Papas and date Chinatown screenwriter Robert Towne, with whom she shared Tamar’s tale.)

As the years went by, what resonated most for Jenkins was Fauna’s “beatific, wonderful, positive spirit” that survived the grim story she had lived through. But the project didn’t fully fall into place until Chris Pine came on board. While directing Wonder Woman, Jenkins enthused to Pine about the script Sheridan was working on, and, eventually, they devised a role for him in I Am the Night.

A composite of various real-life people, Pine’s character, Jay Singletary, is a hard-drinking former Marine and newspaper reporter, haunted by failure and driven to find the truth about George Hodel. “This was just a wonderful chance to tap into all of the nuance of this person, who is so much more than just a pretty face,” Jenkins said of Pine, smiling affectionately. “I think he’s an incredibly rich, dimensional, intelligent, and interesting person. Oftentimes when people find success as something wonderful—a movie star—no one needs them to do any of that.”

Set in 1965, I Am the Night toggles unevenly between the perspectives of Fauna, who knows nothing, and Jay, who knows way too much. “The 16-year-old girl is the Nancy Drew of the story. She is the noir detective,” Jenkins said. “It’s like, here’s this person with nothing to lose, because she’s never had anything, and she’s the one who is wandering through this murky world, and seeing it all for us. But then the surprising thing is that she has the strongest backbone.”

Because she was raised in a black household, Fauna felt comfortable in Watts or at psychedelic Hollywood parties. Jenkins saw her as the perfect observer, “because nobody knows to even pay attention to her. Her ability to get into all of these different worlds fascinated me.”

Jenkins saw a connection between her obsessions with true crime and superhero genres: “They’re both Trojan horses,” she said. “You’ve got the extreme checked off. Your story is there. And so what you can now do is shade it with all of these real explorations into humanity.” But when I expressed surprise that Jenkins would choose to make a cable-TV true-crime limited series as her follow-up project to the massively successful Wonder Woman, Jenkins sat back on her silver velvet chair and shrugged.

“I don’t have a snobbery about whether it’s TV or movies or whatever,” she said. “I want a shot at making great things. TNT just happened to be the only people that we talked to who I felt were in sync with us.” She said that the response to Wonder Woman hit her like a tidal wave, but she was determined to cram this project into her schedule before she jumped into Wonder Woman 1984. “It just fit!”

Jenkins has been kicking against snobbery since her days as a painting student at New York’s Cooper Union. Conceptual art was in favor then, whereas Jenkins said she preferred painters like Francis Bacon. “I feel like art is this life experience, coming through the lens of you, and back out into something, and so why not have it be the beautiful, big, bold expressions of life,” she said. Some of that art background seeped into I Am the Night, which suggests that art connoisseur George Hodel took the “derangement of the senses” evoked by surrealist painters and thinkers to the point of real-world horror. “Both Sam and I studied painting, and it was interesting to revisit everything that we knew about surrealism through this lens,” Jenkins said. “It rocked my world completely.”

For most of her life, Jenkins was resistant to viewing things through the lens of gender. “I grew up as a product of the 70s, and my mom had been a feminist,” she said. “I was super-aware of the struggles that she’d had, but she did this remarkable job of making me feel like they were over.” Jenkins said she hated being categorized as “a woman director,” especially because what she so often heard was, “Let’s get a woman director to do this male-conceived thing.”

Even after Monster won Charlize Theron a lead-actress Oscar, Jenkins found it hard to get studios interested in her passion projects. “They all wanted me to do their thing,” she said, while a standard response to her ideas was, “I don’t get that kind of story.” Although Jenkins always believed she was interested in telling universal tales, she said “it wasn’t until I had success that I felt like I suddenly could really see the sexism in the world, and in the industry. People weren’t interested in talking about those kinds of stories”—stories like Fauna Hodel’s.

Jenkins will now return her focus to the much-anticipated sequel, Wonder Woman 1984, which is set in the 1980s because that’s when she became a fan of the superheroine. So, what was 1984-era Patty Jenkins like? “I was in seventh grade or sixth grade, and . . . I became a punk rocker right around there, I was in the American hardcore scene,” she said. “It was the Bad Brains and Minor Threat and Hüsker Dü . . . there were all kinds. The Replacements. I was knee-deep in all of that.”

Now Jenkins is plotting a course for the future, and among her dream projects are a love story set in New York City, where she spent years as a waitress in the East Village. And what of Diana Prince? “I have pretty clear plans for Wonder Woman 3,” Jenkins said. “Whether I [direct] it or not, I see how her arc should end in my incarnation of Wonder Woman. I have great passion for that.”

Jenkins is optimistic that things are shifting for other women directors. “I think people are realizing there’s money to be made with these other stories that they may not totally understand, and that is incredible,” she said. “I feel like, ‘Oh, my God, there’s so many stories that I want to tell. Maybe I can actually get them made now.”

[Falaskan]

Wonder Woman was quit impactful for me, minus the Ares reveal at the end. I look forward to the next two chapters under Jenkins' leadership!

[s2mikey]

Originally Posted by Falaskan

Wonder Woman was quit impactful for me, minus the Ares reveal at the end. I look forward to the next two chapters under Jenkins' leadership!

I agree. Very solid film although the Ares part was a little dodgy. Overall though, I really got into it and am down with a few more films!

[Canada]

Originally Posted by Falaskan

Wonder Woman was quit impactful for me, minus the Ares reveal at the end. I look forward to the next two chapters under Jenkins' leadership!

Agreed, Wonder Woman was the best origin story since Iron Man in 2008 and before that Batman Begins in 2005.

[Arawn]

I don't know why people have a problem with the Ares reveal. That's where I start getting reinvested in the latter part of the story.

[Falaskan]

Originally Posted by Arawn

I don't know why people have a problem with the Ares reveal. That's where I start getting reinvested in the latter part of the story.

Have you ever been to the Poseidon Adventure attraction in Universal Studios Orlando? It feels like that a bit, just not as lame.


I like it to be fair, just think it's a little all flash no substance. Definitely not a big enough detractor from an otherwise astounding movie.

[Batman1980]

[dgoswald]

Originally Posted by Arawn

I don't know why people have a problem with the Ares reveal. That's where I start getting reinvested in the latter part of the story.

I liked it. The good natured, conciliatory politician pushing for peace turns out to be the god of war. I'm sure there's some irony in there somewhere.

[ArrestedDevelopment]

Pine or I'm out. His chemistry with Gal is what MADE the first film. They play off each other fantastically.

[Arawn]

Originally Posted by Falaskan

Have you ever been to the Poseidon Adventure attraction in Universal Studios Orlando? It feels like that a bit, just not as lame.

I... don't know what that means.

[Falaskan]

Originally Posted by Arawn

I... don't know what that means.

I think you mean, you haven't been there. Seriously, you must be able to deduce that Universal Studios Orlando is a place, and that Poseidon's Adventure is an attraction.

[Beautiful HD]

I can’t wait!

[AaronJ]

Great news! I really liked the first one, and I expect to very much like the second. So, I'm excited by a third installment. I just hope Patty directs it.

[theEXORCIST]

Hopefully the third chapter will have the pantheon of greek gods and be a special effects extravaganza

[phobicsquirrel]

Man that's insane.. Still no mos2!!!!!

[phobicsquirrel]

Originally Posted by ArrestedDevelopment

Pine or I'm out. His chemistry with Gal is what MADE the first film. They play off each other fantastically.

It was nice but he you know made a sacrifice.

[Falaskan]

Originally Posted by phobicsquirrel

It was nice but he you know made a sacrifice.

It's already rumored she'll petition

[Show spoiler] Hades to resurrect

him.

[SpiderBaby]

Originally Posted by phobicsquirrel

Man that's insane.. Still no mos2!!!!!

These fools are trying to move a DC universe along with no Superman. Instead we'll get a Supergirl and Batboy.

[Canada]

Originally Posted by phobicsquirrel

Man that's insane.. Still no mos2!!!!!

I hear somewhere I can't sit the source but Batman VS Superman is basically MOS 2

[Shingster]

Originally Posted by Arawn

I don't know why people have a problem with the Ares reveal. That's where I start getting reinvested in the latter part of the story.

The reveal is fine enough (although completely predictable), the problem is that you're then left wondering how the hell they are gonna pitch a 55yr old David Thewlis in some form of action role as a mighty greek god. Empty CGI and boring exposition is how...