Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins decided to change the capacity of her involvement in the upcoming Cleopatra movie starring Gal Gadot. Jenkins is still set to produce the epic biopic but is handing the director’s chair over to Emmy nominee Kari Skogland, who most recently directed all six episodes of Disney+’s Marvel series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.
Deadline revealed that Skogland will take over because Jenkins decided to focus on Wonder Woman 3 and Star Wars: Rogue Squadron, her next two projects as director. Since Paramount is probably eyeing a release window for Cleopatra sooner rather than later, it’s understandable that Jenkins would choose to step down as she’d be stretched pretty thin with three practically simultaneous blockbuster directing gigs under her belt. Not that Jenkins will have a lot of downtime: as she will still serve as producer for Cleopatra, she will continue to have a massive involvement in the movie’s development.
Skogland, on the other hand, is dusting off her feature film director hat, since she hasn’t helmed a project for the big screen since 2008’s 50 Dead Men Walking. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier’s blockbuster-like setting, however, interested Jenkins, Gadot, and Charles Roven (The Dark Knight) – producers of Cleopatra – enough to invite Skogland to lead what is set to be an epic story in scale. The fresh-appointed Cleopatra director has had a vast experience on TV, where she directed episodes from series like Queer as Folk, The Borgias, Vikings, The Walking Dead, The Handmaid’s Tale, and many others.
The new version of Cleopatra is written by Laeta Kalogridis, who is no stranger to epic stories. She wrote Oliver Stone’s Alexander and viking action-adventure Pathfinder. Most recently, Kalogridis wrote Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island, Robert Rodriguez’s Alita, and Terminator: Genisys. She also created the Netflix sci-fi series Altered Carbon.
The former Cleopatra movie, released in 1963, is an industry-defining title that was epic in every sense of the word. At the time, it became the most expensive film ever made and paid its leading actor (Elizabeth Taylor) a record sum of $1 million, not including gross profits – a paycheck no other actor had managed to ask for up until that point. It boiled down to a 4-hour masterpiece that was nominated to nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
Paramount is yet to announce a release date or further details on the production of Cleopatra. All we know so far is that Gal Gadot is set to play the title character.