Leading the Justice Society of America into battle in the new DC Universe Original Animated Movie Justice Society: World War II is Wonder Woman, with story ideas originally planned for a series starring the Amazon.
Producer Butch Lukic revealed that he was developing a Wonder Woman series that during World War II that never came to pass. After the success of the 2017 live-action Wonder Woman film, Lukic incorporated some of the ideas for the series as he was developing pitches for the next wave of DC animated movies.
"When we had to pitch to DC storylines we were going to produce for the DC Animated Universe -- obviously, we've got to do Batman which we ended up doing as The Long Halloween and we restarted a new version of Superman -- this came about because I wanted to do a World War II story with Wonder Woman, because I initially had a pitch with DC Access to do a Wonder Woman series based in World War II," Lukic tells CBR.
"This was before the first Wonder Woman movie came out; while we were pitching it, we found out that they were doing a World War I take on Wonder Woman. And I thought it would be good to do this as a series, but the development didn't last long because they didn't think Wonder Woman had legs, not until the movie came out that they realized 'Oh shit, this is a moneymaker.' So I just took some of the ideas that we had for that series and applied them towards this film."
Set in the 1940s, Wonder Woman charges headfirst into the ongoing war, helping the JSA liberate Europe from the Axis Powers in the film. And while the JSA's participation in the war is a team effort, Wonder Woman is an instrumental part of dismantling the Nazi war machine, springing from Lukic's plans to bring the Amazon to the global conflict.
Produced by Warner Bros. Animation, DC and Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, Justice Society: World War II stars Stana Katic as Wonder Woman, Matt Bomer as The Flash, Elysia Rotaru as Black Canary, Chris Diamantopoulos as Steve Trevor, Omid Abtahi as Hawkman, Matthew Mercer as Hourman, Armen Taylor as Jay Garrick, Liam McIntyre as Aquaman, Ashleigh LaThrop as Iris West, Geoffrey Arend as Charles Halstead/Advisor, Keith Ferguson as Dr. Fate and Darin De Paul as Roosevelt. The film will be released digitally on April 27 and on 4K UHD and Blu-ray on May 11.