It's official: Michelle Maclaren will be directing WONDER WOMAN!

You guys, it’s actually happening. It only took several mystifying false starts (just what the heck was wrong with Joss Whedon’s pitch?) and a whole lot of jokes from the competition, but a Wonder Woman movie is actually being made. And unlike just about everything else in Warner Bros\DC Comics’ new movie stable, Zack Snyder has nothing to do with it. Instead, WB\DC have followed through on their promised mandate to get a female director for Wonder Woman, as THR is reporting that they have tapped the award-winning Michelle Maclaren to helm the planned standalone film, which will feature Gal Gadot in the titular role.

This will actually be Maclaren’s first feature film directing gig, but just like her Game of Thrones directing buddy Alan Taylor graduated from the small screen to Thor: The Dark World, Maclaren has been cutting her teeth on TV to critical acclaim. She’s done tremendous work on the previously mentioned Game of Thrones, X-Files and The Walking Dead, but it’s her stint on Breaking Bad that really got people talking. She would eventually go home with two Primetime Emmy’s for her efforts on AMC’s juggernaut drama – an achievement made even more impressive when you consider that the show also boasted the talents of Rian Johnson and Vince Gilligan and more – and with that awards buzz behind her, she was recently popping up right at the top of the list of candidates for the Wonder Woman gig.

Besides for just being in the director’s chair though, Maclaren is supposedly also been tasked with developing Wonder Woman, working with the film’s still announced writers to come up with the film’s script. While Gadot will be debuting as the demi-god Amazonian warrior-princess in Snyder’s upcoming Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, recent rumours have suggested that her follow-up stand alone film will in fact be going back in time to tell her origin story. According to the rumours, the film will take place in the 1920’s, and deal with Themiscyra – that’s the Amazons’ secret man-free island paradise – coming into contact with the outside world for the first time. By setting it in a time when equal rights for women was just starting to happen, it really taps into the female empowerment at the core of the Wonder Woman character.

And according to THR’s sources, that very female empowerment is what led the studio to specifically seek out a woman to lead this movie. They had to face the realities though that a female director with big budget CGI-laden blockbuster experience is almost impossible to find, and there are essentially none who have ever directed a tentpole comic book movie. That being said though, it’s hard to argue against Maclaren’s genre credentials, and she might just bring that much-needed heavy drama angle that Wonder Woman needs to avoid all the really kooky pitfalls of it’s original origin story.

As previously mentioned, we’ll be getting out first taste of Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman in Batman v Superman on March 25, 2016, with her solo film only scheduled for June 23, 2017. It’s pretty much confirmed though that she will be back on-screen later in that year in Snyder’s Justice League – Part One on November 10, 2017.

Last Updated: November 25, 2014