4) Joss Whedon’s Wonder Woman
Nearly 150 hours of Buffy the Vampire Slayer proved that Joss Whedon can expertly craft a female superhero tale that covers all the requisite action and emotional beats needed, which is probably why he was such an attractive choice for writing and directing Wonder Woman. Producer Joel Silver hired Whedon to do just that in 2005, shortly after the filmmaker finished his first big screen project as director, Serenity. But fan jubilation over the selection of Whedon was matched by the disappointment just a few years later when he departed the project due to creative differences.
According to Whedon, he never developed a full script and barely completed the outline stage before it became clear that he and the studio were on different pages so far as Wonder Woman was concerned. Whedon, in the years since, has bemoaned the lack of a definitive Wonder Woman, which is one of the reasons why he was having such a hard time trying to put a script for the movie together. What is known about the story is that it would have followed the traditional origin of the character, the crash landing of American pilot Steve Trevor on Paradise Island, and Wonder Woman’s accompaniment of him back to “man’s world” where she fights for truth and justice.
Although a lot people had fun with the guessing game about who might have played Wonder Woman in a Joss Whedon joint, the director’s been adamant that his thought process never went as far as casting. In the end though, the question of who would have played Wonder Woman is secondary to how the movie would have turned out, and a lot of people had absolute faith in Whedon. Given the box office return of his two Avengers movies, there must be someone over at Warner Bros. that wonders if they made a mistake not being more enthusiastic about Whedon’s vision for one of their greatest characters.