Why There’s No Wonder Woman 3, Shazam 3 or Aquaman 3

Aquaman is the highest-grossing DC movie ever made, Wonder Woman was its best-reviewed pillar, and Shazam owned the family audience — so why is none of them getting a third film?

By Becky — The Cinephile — CelebnMusic247

Start with the ledger. Aquaman (2018) grossed $1.15 billion worldwide — the highest-grossing DC film ever made. Wonder Woman (2017) made $824 million as that universe’s best-reviewed pillar. Shazam! turned $100 million into $368 million and owned the family audience. Three franchises, three proven earners — and not one of them is getting a third film. This desk went looking for why.

Wonder Woman: the treatment, the denial, and the promise that evaporated. In December 2022, director Patty Jenkins and co-writer Geoff Johns submitted a Wonder Woman 3 treatment, and on December 7 The Hollywood Reporter reported the film dead: Jenkins had been told it “did not fit in with the new plans” — delivered by James Gunn, Peter Safran and Warner Bros. Pictures chiefs Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy. What happened inside that room has two versions. Insider reporting — TheWrap, which stood by its story, and Deadline — says the treatment drew notes over character-arc problems and Jenkins declined to rework it as asked. Jenkins’ own on-the-record statement says the opposite: “I never walked away. I was open to considering anything asked of me. It was my understanding that there was nothing I could do to move anything forward at this time.” Both accounts agree on the outcome: no rewrite was ever commissioned.

Gal Gadot’s exit was slower and stranger. In 2023 she said Gunn and Safran had assured her a third film would be developed with her; Variety’s sources disputed any promise was made. In August 2026, on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Gadot gave her fullest account: “No, they told me the opposite. They were like, ‘We’re going to develop it with you, the third…'” — and it simply never happened. She added that she would probably not return even if asked. And Paradise Lost, the Wonder Woman TV series: announced in January 2023, defended by Gunn as recently as April 2026 (“extreme development”), then reported by Variety and The Ankler in August 2026 to have ceased development — a cancellation DC Studios has never officially confirmed. The character’s future is a reboot film by Ana Nogueira, with a new actress cast once the script is finished. Is Gunn revisiting Gadot? Nothing in the record says so. Everything in it says the opposite.

Aquaman: the billion-dollar man, traded for Lobo. Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom fell hard from the original — about $440 million against a $205 million budget, under break-even estimates — and no third film was ever greenlit by either regime. But $440 million was still DC’s biggest gross since 2018, and Gunn’s answer for the man who headlined its billion-dollar movie was not a sequel. It was Lobo. On the record, the recast was Momoa’s own dream: his text — “Lobo, baby!” — was, per Gunn, literally the first he received after the DC Studios announcement, and Gunn has said the move “was always part of the plan.” Then came the outcome. Supergirl opened June 26, 2026 and finished with $126 million worldwide on a reported $170 million budget — the lowest-grossing DC film ever released, at 53% on Rotten Tomatoes with a B- CinemaScore, a loss analysts peg in the hundreds of millions, and a hole Warner Bros. Discovery had to answer for in its earnings. Safran’s defense to the New York Times was that the film was “just one component of a broader, long-term strategy.” This desk’s verdict, stated as opinion: the film around Momoa was sloppy and inert, his Lobo turn came and went inside it, and the studio spent the lead of its biggest-ever franchise as a supporting player in its biggest-ever bomb. Its later streaming rebound is a footnote, not a rescue.

Shazam: the honest exception. This desk will not pretend all three deaths are one crime. Shazam! Fury of the Gods grossed $134 million against a $125 million budget before marketing — audiences simply did not come, despite an 86% audience score from the people who did. Director David F. Sandberg walked away from superheroes; Zachary Levi has said, “I don’t know what the future holds for it all.” The box office pulled this plug first. What Gunn can be charged with is narrower: he never offered the character the Elseworlds lifeline his label exists for, and the friendliest hero DC had got no goodbye at all.

So is Gunn messing up the DCU? Run his ledger. The old franchises were fading — Wonder Woman 1984 was divisive, Aquaman 2 dropped 60%. The reboot’s flagship is no failure either: Superman made $616 million, turned a profit, and holds 83% with critics and 90% with audiences, and this desk won’t call that a flop, because it wasn’t one. But hold the two ledgers side by side. Superman succeeded at roughly half of Aquaman’s gross. Add Supergirl, and the entire DCU’s theatrical output to date — about $742 million — has grossed less than Aquaman alone. That is the question the reboot still has to answer.

Which brings us to today. Clayface opens this morning: an R-rated body-horror film made for a reported $40 million, tracking at $25–33 million for the weekend, with first reactions raving (comparisons to The Fly and Darkman), a few dissents, and a break-even bar of $80–100 million worldwide it could clear by Halloween. (The record insists on caution: Supergirl’s early reactions glowed too, before full reviews landed.) Can Clayface save the DCU? It can be the studio’s best dollar-for-dollar result and prove a small-budget horror lane works. What it cannot do is replace a billion-dollar pillar — that verdict gets written by Man of Tomorrow next July.

The fan pulse: two fandoms sharing one hashtag. Ask the ticket-buying public and Gunn is winning: Superman’s 90% audience score is the kind of number studios frame. Ask the internet and you get a civil war. In Grace Randolph’s November 2025 poll of more than 17,000 fans, “restore the Snyderverse” edged “let James Gunn cook,” 44% to 43%. A Tyrone Magnus YouTube poll drew over 9,000 votes and went 57% for restoration — with a telling 25% choosing “both.” These are self-selected samples, not science, but the shape never changes: a large, organized old guard that never stood down, facing a quieter majority that has mostly moved on. What that old guard wants most is not a reboot — it is an ending. #RestoreTheSnyderVerse put up 1.5 million tweets in a single day in 2021, and the same fans were back in October 2026, pleading with new owner David Ellison and flooding Zack Snyder’s Instagram every time he posts a throwback photo. And that ending has a face: Henry Cavill’s Superman. Inside the movement, his return is arguably the single most-demanded comeback in all of DC fandom — the campaign’s iconography is built around his Man of Steel, and when Snyder captioned a 2025 photo “Henry Cavill is Superman,” posted after the new Superman had already opened, it became a founding artifact of the resurgence. October 2026 “peak casting” threads still call him definitive, and the Change.org petition to restore the Snyderverse sits near 71,000 signatures and still collects them. Petitions measure an organized minority’s intensity, not a majority’s verdict — but nothing else in this fandom matches it. Gadot’s name draws the most heated threads of all — fierce loyalty on one side, fierce rejection on the other — while affection for Momoa’s Aquaman runs broad but unorganized: everybody loved the billion-dollar king; nobody built him a campaign. Shazam barely registers, and the one legacy those threads beg to keep is Pierce Brosnan’s Doctor Fate. What do fans want next? The DCU’s Batman, above all — Clayface’s comment sections are half horror hype, half “where is Batman?” — then Man of Tomorrow, and more of the dark, adult lane Clayface is testing. Split fandom, clear message: finish the old story or finish building the new one. Just stop leaving both half-done.

The 247 Take — Gunn didn’t kill three healthy franchises; he inherited one giant, one fading star and one money-loser, and chose a clean slate over all of them. But you don’t get to trade away the only billion-dollar hero DC ever had, spend him in your biggest bomb, and then act surprised when fans keep asking where the third films went.

Photo Courtesy of Instagram Gal Gadot

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