New Wonder Woman 1984 pic gives best look yet at Kristen Wiig’s Cheetah in-costume

Had 2020 actually played out as expected instead of turning into the worst game of Jumanji ever, we would have watched Wonder Woman 1984 over a month ago already. Instead, thanks to the global pandemic, the Gal Gadot-led sequel to 2017’s record-breaking DC Comics superhero movie has been delayed twice now and will only be hitting screens in October. What’s strange though is that even with all that extra time the Warner Bros marketing team has been rather stingy with previews.

This is especially true when it comes to Kristen Wiig who will be facing off against Gadot’s Diana Prince/Wonder Woman as iconic supervillain Cheetah. Up until now, we’ve basically had one pic, a poster, and a few brief glimpses of her in the single (totally cool) trailer released thus far, but all of these have been of Cheetah’s mild-mannered civilian identity, Barbara Ann Minerva. The only hint at how she would look in her transformed feline form has been a few leaked silly looking toy promos. That changes today though thanks to a new promo pic that was tweeted out last night:

Well, damn. Even with all the obscuring visual effects layered on top, that looks PURR-fect! It’s unclear though if Wiig’s transformed look is being done via makeup or some post-production CG trickery. I’m hoping for the former, but I’m guessing it’s going to be the latter. Either way, this looks fantastic thus far and has now suddenly transformed Wonder Woman 1984 into the Cats! movie we should actually have got last year instead of whatever that Razzie-winning cinematic nightmare fuel was.

For the uninitiated, Cheetah’s comic book origin story is a bit hard to follow thanks to numerous DC Comics reboots over the years which actually saw different characters use the name. It appears though that Wonder Woman 1984 will be borrowing elements from a number of those iterations and smooshing them together.

The gist is that Minerva is an archaeologist/expert in dangerous relics who also closely befriends and works with Diana. During her research into further evidence of actual demigods like Wonder Woman, Minerva comes into contact with an ancient mystical dagger once belonging to a lost tribe of Amazons. When cutting herself on it, she is possessed by the Goddess of the Hunt, transforming into the super-powered Cheetah and putting her in conflict with her own friend. Cue the catfight!

Wonder Woman 1984 also stars Chris Pine as Steve Trevor (somehow back from the dead nearly 70 years later), Pedro Pascal as Maxwell Lord, Robin Wright as Amazon general Antiope, and Connie Nielsen as Amazon queen and Diana’s mother, Hippolyta. Patty Jenkins returns to direct from a script she co-wrote with DC Comics icon Geoff Johns and David Callaham. Wonder Woman 1984 is currently scheduled for release on 2 October, but that may change yet again depending on how the rest of the year plays out.

Last Updated: July 10, 2020