Nicolas Winding Refn Says Directing 'Wonder Woman' Depends on 'Logan's Run'

Tuesday, 16 August 2011 13:40 Written by Jordan DeSaulnier

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Nicolas Winding Refn Says Directing 'Wonder Woman' Depends on 'Logan's Run'

After making incredible films like Bronson, the Pusher trilogy, and Valhalla Rising, Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn makes his American debut with Drive, an excellent noir story due in September. A verbose and engaging speaker always worth listening to and seemingly always willing to talk, Refn has been saying for over a year that he'd like to take a crack at a Wonder Woman feature, and also that he thinks Christina Hendricks, who plays the formidable Joan on AMC's Mad Men and appears in Drive, would be ideal casting for the Amazonian superheroine.

There's no offer from Warner Bros and no current plans for Wonder Woman, but Refn has now said, in fairly offhanded fashion, that if he makes a profitable Logan's Run remake for the studio, then he could very well have his way with the Diana of Themyscira, in a purely creative sense.

Refn conducted a Q & A session at the Empire Big Screen Festival over the weekend, and ThePlaylist was present to catch his comment about the potential for an Amazonian adventure. Quoth the director,

“I would love to make ‘Wonder Woman.’ And I also think that Christina Hendricks would be the perfect Wonder Woman, but Warner Bros haven’t called yet. But I’m getting closer with ‘Logan’s Run.’ I think someone said to me in a meeting that if I get ‘Logan’s Run’ right, then I’ll get ‘Wonder Woman.’”

With his Drive star Ryan Gosling, Refn is attached to develop a new Logan's Run for producer Joel Silver. That said, the creative team is taking its time attempting to build a science fiction setting and story based on the novel by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson and the subsequent 1976 film starring Micheal York.

That project, if it does indeed end up coming to fruition, would get underway after Only God Forgives, the next collaboration between Refn and Gosling, an action thriller set in Bangkok that's currently in pre-production.

As for Wonder Woman, Warner Bros has no certain plans for the character at the moment. The studio is still hoping that their stable of DC Comics characters can launch franchises to take the place of the Harry Potter series, despite the critical and commercial failure of Green Lantern this summer. Right now, the WB's figurative hands are full with The Dark Knight Rises and Man of Steel, though due consideration is being given to the idea of a Justice League at some point in the near-future. This year, NBC's Wonder Woman pilot starring Adrianne Palicki as Diana and her star-spangled underoo-wearing alter ego did not make it to series.

Regardless of whether or not Nicolas Winding Refn ever gets to realize his dream of making Wonder Woman, y'all should make the time to check out Drive on September 16th.

Fun fact: According to Supergods: What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us About Being Human by Grant Morrison, Wonder Woman creator and professor at Columbia and Tufts universities William Moulton Marston was also the inventor of "the polygraph test apparatus, or lie detector, that is still in use today." For reals.