Zack Snyder shares details on scrapped Wonder Woman 1854 concept

The first Wonder Woman movie found Diana Prince fighting in World War I, but the original idea would have found the Amazonian fighting in a much earlier conflict: The Crimean War of the 1800s. Zack Snyder previously shared an image from that possible project, known as Wonder Woman 1854, but the director recently spilled more details while speaking with Empire.

The Wonder Woman 1854 image Snyder shared over three years ago was rather brutal, showcasing Diana surrounded by various soldiers and holding three severed heads. “The idea of that was an early riff we were doing: once Wonder Woman left the island in search of Ares, what happened to her in her different incarnations?” Snyder said. “My idea for it was that she would travel around the world looking for Ares and she would go to every place where there was conflict.“

Snyder continued, “On those battlefields she found these lovers, warriors, and they would age out because she is immortal. They would be her lover for ten years or they might die in battle, and it was probably sad for a lot of the guys because they would see her starting to be nice to the next young soldier and be like, ‘Oh, I’m being replaced.’ But all the guys that she had with her were those loyal warriors she found on the battlefields all over the world.” Chris Pine’s Steve Trevor would have eventually come into the story, but the project moved in a different direction. “It was never a screenplay, but we talked about it so much that it kind of had its own life,” Snyder said.

Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins objected to the plans for the character and bumped heads with the studio early in development. “They wanted to hire me like a beard; they wanted me to walk around on set as a woman, but it was their story and their vision. And my ideas? They didn’t even want to read my script. There was such mistrust of a different way of doing things and a different point of view,” Jenkins said. “So that was definitely happening, even when I first joined ‘Wonder Woman’ it was like, ‘uhh, yeah, ok, but let’s do it this other way.’ But I was like, ‘Women don’t want to see that. Her being harsh and tough and cutting people’s heads off, that’s not what— I’m a ‘Wonder Woman’ fan, that’s not what we’re looking for. Still, I could feel that shaky nervousness [on their part] of my point of view.“

As Wonder Woman 3 has been shelved and DC Studios reportedly isn’t interested in revisiting the character at the moment, it could be a while before we catch up with Diana Prince.