Gal Gadot clarifies what happened with her Wonder Woman role

Insofar as anyone thought Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman would ever be part of James Gunn and Peter Safran’s rebooted DC Universe for Warner Bros., the actor would like to clarify that she made the decision to vacate the role herself. Gadot said on Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast that this decision was based on Warner Bros.’ treatment of co-star Henry Cavill and of Wonder Woman and WW84 director Patty Jenkins. “They [Gunn and Safran] were like, ‘We’re going to develop it with you, the third [Wonder Woman movie],’ la la la,” Gadot told Horowitz. “But I saw the way everybody else were [sic] handled.” 

“The Henry situation was not handled elegantly, to say the least,” Gadot went on, referring to the casting misery-go-round actor Henry Cavill endured amid WB’s hierarchical power shifts in the DC Universe, which began and ended with the Dwayne Johnson super-vehicle Black Adam. Cavill stated in a social media announcement that, as the Gunn/Safran changing of the guard loomed, he would appear as Superman again in the future, a plan was nipped in the bud almost immediately after Gunn/Safran announced DC Studios the next day. It’s a situation that Gunn himself told Horowitz was “unfair” to Cavill, as they had no intention of casting the Man Of Steel actor in the DCU-launching Superman: Legacy. David Corenswet was cast as Superman in June 2023.