WB Games Cancels The Wonder Woman Game And Closes Three Studios Including Monolith Productions

Publisher Warner Bros. Games is set to close development studios Monolith Productions, Player First Games, and Warner Bros. Games San Diego and cancel the previously announced Wonder Woman title that was in development at Monolith.

As reported by Jason Schreier of Bloomberg, this wave of studio closures has come during a turmultuous time for Warner Bros. Discovery Inc., with the company restructuring its entertainment divisions in a bid to increase profitability. The news broke thanks to Bloomberg obtaining an internal memo that was distributed to staff, wherein JB Perrette, Head of Games and Streaming for Warner Bros., said, “The quality of too many of our new releases has really missed the mark. We need to make some substantial changes to our portfolio/team structure if we are to commit the necessary resources to get back to a ‘fewer but bigger franchises’ strategy.

While a spokesperson for WB Games has been in contact with Bloomberg, Kotaku Senior Reporter Ethan Gach has taken to Bluesky with a statement from WB, confirming the initial report and providing some additional information. “We have had to make some very difficult decisions to structure our development studios and innvestments around building the best games possible with our key franchises – Harry Potter, Mortal Kombat, DC and Game of Thrones.”

“This is a strategic direction and not a reflection of these teams or the talent that consists within them,” the statement reads.

You can read the rest of the statement here, but I want that sentence to hang in the air.

WB confirms Jason's reporting in a new statement

— AmericanTruckSongs10 (@ethangach.bsky.social) 2025-02-25T19:14:39.498Z

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Founded in 1994, Monlith Productions has been at the helm of various freanchises throughout its history, including F.E.A.R. and Condemned, but it is most known for its recent releases in Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War. Both are great action titles set within Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings mythos and introduced the revolutionary Nemesis system that would allow enemies to remember previous interactions with the player character, growing stronger and more formidable with each encounter. Wonderfully, WB Games trademarked this system, and it was said to be making a return in the Wonder Woman game, but instead, it will go back into the vault where it’s been wasted for years.

The now-cancelled Wonder Woman game was revealed during The Game Awards 2021 and hasn’t been seen since. According to another report from Schreier, the project had cost more than $100 million USD and was, at that point, years away from a release. That report goes on to explain that Monlith were looking to develop an original franchise, but WB wasn’t interested in the idea and instead proposed working with an established property.

Player First Games is on the other side of the coin, being a new studio formed in 2019. The studio’s first and only game was MultiVersus, a platform fighter filled with Warner Bros. properties like DC, Scooby-Doo, Game of Thrones and Adventure Time. Confusingly releasing into early access in late 2022, the game would be completely pulled from sale and service, only to be re-released in 2024. The game received numerous content updates, leading to the studio being acquired by WB in July of last year. A short few weeks ago, however, it was announced that the game will no longer be supported past May 30 and will only be available in an offline capacity to those who have downloaded the game before that date.

Finally, Warner Bros. San Diego is another young studio formed in 2019 to develop free-to-play mobile titles using the licences available to WB.

While we shouldn’t move too far away from the devastating human element, as many will now be out of a job, it’s impossible not to shine a light on WB Games’ continued spiral. The broader Warner Bros. Discovery company is in dire straights, but the handling of the interactive entertainment division is particularly aggregious. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League was a failure when looking at any metric, with the live-service game ending support less than a year after launch. Developer Rocksteady was hit with layoffs thanks to Suicide Squad’s poor performance, the aforementioned MultiVersus was plagued with issues due to mismanagement and poor planning, and the corporate decision makers are too busy chasing trends to build a sustainable future for the creatives they have employed.

Making a vacuous statement about these closures, saying that the ongoing focus is locked on a handful of established properties says to me that WB is less interested than ever in fostering creativity or expanding its horizons in the video game space. The live-service money farm hasn’t paid dividends, so WB looks to be taking its ball and going home. It’s just a shame that the ball is tied to the livelihood of so many creative people who want to make good games.

No call to action or question today, that’s all folks.