James Gunn Debunks a Major DC Rumor After Fans Were Left Devastated for Weeks

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DC’s Paradise Lost TV Series Confirmed To Still Be Happening

There have been rumors floating that the DCU slate that Gunn and Peter Safran unveiled back in 2023 has undergone some big revisions, and that one of them was the cancellation of Paradise Lost. That series was going to explore Themmyscira (aka “Paradise Island”), the mystical island homeland of the Amazons, before the “birth” of Princess Diana, the girl who grows up to be Wonder Woman. “It’s really about the political intrigue behind a society of all women,” Safran said during the DCU slate announcement (via Variety).

When one DC fan on Threads asked James Gunn if Paradise has truly been lost, Gunn gave the unambiguous answer of “Definitely not.” At this point in the thread, he had already shot down three or four other misguided rumors, and the frustration was clearly getting to him. “Jesus I go on Threads for the first time in weeks and it’s just one insanely wrong thing after the other. What is going on?”

Last we heard from Gunn on this subject was in November of 2024, when he let DC fans on social media know that Paradise Lost was still “Very active development” at DC Studios.

What Will Paradise Lost Be About?

The show was originally pitched as a female-led Game of Thrones “swords and sandals” fantasy show, with deeper political intrigue. “How did that come about? What’s the origin of an island of all women? What are the beautiful truths and the ugly truths behind all of that? And what’s the scheming like between the different power players in that society?” Gunn teased back in 2023.

In the late 2010s, Wonder Woman broke through to even bigger mainstream heights, on the back of her feature-film debut in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, her solo Wonder Woman (2017) movie, and the infamous Justice League team-up film(s). The live-action success also revitalized Wonder Woman’s comic book relevance, inspiring bold new takes on the character (Tom King’s 2020s run, the new Absolute Wonder Woman variant).

There has also been much more lore created about the origins of Themyscira and the Amazons. The Eisner Award-winning DC Black Label miniseries Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons was released in 2021-2022 and provided a lot of story that fans speculate will be adapted for Paradise Lost. Historia: The Amazons (by writer Kelly Sue DeConnic and artists Phil Jimenez, Gene Ha, and Nicola Scott) examined how the female Greek Goddesses conspired to create the Amazons in secret, using the tortured souls of women killed by men.

The story then chronicles how that secret origin creates deceptions and conflicts between the gods and the Amazons from the start, before moving onto how a human woman named Hippolyta is saved by the Amazons and becomes obsessed with joining them, eventually being welcomed intot he tribe, and earning her title as the seventh Amazon queen (despite objections), who will rule over other women from man’s world the Amazons rescue and adopt.

Finally, the miniseries revealed how Zeus eventually discovers the Amazons, despite the goddesses hiding them from him. Enraged, Zeus sends an army of men (and the demigod Heracles, aka Hercules) to slaughter the Amazons. Hippolyta rallies all the Amazon tribes together as their sole queen, but ultimately has to retreat, riding a mystic horse to Olympus to make a truce with Zeus: the Amazons live long lives in their paradise, but lose the freedom to leave the Island and roam man’s world. That fate nearly breaks Hippolyta, until the same goddesses heal a deep scar from her past by magically creating a “daughter” for her out of clay. That child of destiny will one day change the Amazons’ fate, but first, she gives Hippolyta a fulfilling new purpose as both a queen and a mother.

Historia was weirdly imaginative with its depiction of the Greek Gods, their powers, and their entire perception of existence, and wildly brutal with its story of Hippolyta and her rise to being Queen of the Amazons. In short, it’s exactly the kind of story that Gunn and Safran seemed to be describing for Paradise Lost. And we’re (still) here for it, whenever it finally gets into development.

Still no word yet on a production timeline for Paradise Lost. Discuss the DCU with us on the ComicBook Forum!