Among the reasons for Monolith Productions’ recent closure and the cancellation of the studio’s Wonder Woman project might just have been the commercial failure of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. On a recent episode of the Kinda Funny podcast, Bloomberg’s Jason Schrier spoke about WB Games under the tenure of its former head David Haddad.
Schrier brings up the fact that, among Haddad’s decisions during his tenure include the cancellation of a new IP by Monolith that would have potentially made use of an expanded version of the popular Nemesis system from Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and its sequel. This decision had led to all directors at the studio resigning, leading to work on the Wonder Woman project starting from scratch.
The Wonder Woman game would have also made use of the Nemesis system before its development was rebooted once more around a year ago. This time around, the game would be a linear action game, rather than an open-world one.
Schrier points out that this decision was too late, and the failure of attempted live-service games with licensed characters, including Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League and MultiVersus had already put WB Games in a bit of a hole.
“But by then, it was kind of too late especially because last year was so bad for the Warner Brothers Games organization,” said Schreier. “Last year Suicide Squad was a humungous flop – they wrote off $200 million because of that. MultiVersus and Quidditch Champions, also both flops, [they] wrote off another $100 million because of that.”
Haddad stepped down from his role as president of WB Games earlier this year after having spent 12 years with the company. His successor is JB Perrette, who is also the CEO and president of Warner Bros. Discovery global streaming and games division.
“David has thoughtfully and purposefully chosen a time when our release schedule is lighter, which will help minimize disruption to our ongoing projects and strategic plans and allow this team to smoothly prepare for its next record-breaking title,” said Perrette about Haddad’s departure.
The closure of Monolith Productions came alongside other studios at WB Games being shut down, including Player First Games and WB Games San Diego. Warner Bros. said that this happened because it had to make “some very difficult decisions to structure our development studios and investments around building the best games possible with our key franchises – Harry Potter, Mortal Kombat, DC and Game of Thrones.”
While things may have been somewhat chaotic behind the scenes, comic writer Gail Simone recently commented on her time working with the studio as a long-term consultant for the Wonder Woman project. In a series of posts on X, Simone praised both the studio, as well as Warner Bros., calling both companies “enthusiastic and supportive.”
“The game was gorgeous and expansive,” wrote Simone. “It was beautiful to look at. I am not going to give details for a number of reasons, but every effort was made to make this not just a great game, but a great WONDER WOMAN game. A showpiece epic.”
“And all of that was because of the team. Everyone who worked on it brought their a-game. Programmers, artists, designers, everyone. I don’t know that I have ever worked with a team that cared more about making sure the end product was perfect.”
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