UPDATED 5/19, 12:05 p.m. ET: Just months after it was green-lit, HBO Max and DC have scrapped plans for a live-action Wonder Twins film.
Per Deadline, the cancellation of the project comes not long after the Warner Bros.-Discovery merger, which came alongside the news that CEO and president David Zaslav would cut $3 billion in costs at the company. Production on Wonder Twins was set to kick off in Atlanta this summer.
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Warner Bros. has tapped Black Adam co-writer Adam Sztykiel for DC’s live-action Wonder Twins movie for HBO Max.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, Sztykiel will make his directorial debut and write the script, which is based on alien siblings Zan and Jayna. The latter possesses the ability to shapeshift into animals, and the former can morph into different forms of water. They mobilize their superpowers by touching rings and saying their motto, “Wonder Twin powers, activate!”
Hailing from the planet Exxor and accompanied by a pet space monkey named Gleek, the two were first introduced in Hanna Barbera’s 1977 animated TV show All-New Super Friends Hour. As part of the DC universe, the twins were positioned as younger comrades of well-known heroes like Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. They have also been in episodes of Teen Titans Go!, Smallville, and The Flash.
Sztykiel has worked with Warner Bros. on pics like Due Date, Project X, Spy Guys, We’re the Millers, and the Dwayne Johnson-starring Rampage. Sztykiel co-wrote the screenplay for the upcoming Black Adam, which also stars Johnson and is set to be one of Warner’s biggest DC releases, coming July 29.
“Black Adam is a disruptor in the DC Comics world, and it has to be a disruptor in the way that we make a superhero movie,” Black Adam director Jaume Collet-Serra said recently. “I like to be challenged, and I wanted to create new technology, so we developed the way that [Adam] moves, the way that he flies, his costume. And then it trickled down to every other character and the movie itself. But there was always the goal—to be new and unique in the storytelling and in every aspect of it.”
