Scream 7 star Isabel May talks about the canceled DCEU film she was set to co-lead. Besides playing Tatum Evans, the daughter of Sidney Prescott, in the Scream franchise, May is best known for her role as Elsa Dutton in the Yellowstone prequel 1883. However, she was once set to join the DC Universe. In 2022, she was cast as Jayna, one of the Wonder Twins, in an HBO Max film that would have co-starred Riverdale’s KJ Apa as Zan.
On May 18, 2022, a month before cameras were set to roll, Wonder Twins was one of the first films canceled by Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav. Speaking with Entertainment Weekly, May talked about her role in the canceled DCEU film. “Most things fall apart, and you have to be okay with that. You have to be capable of just taking the punch on the chin, standing back up, walking forward, stepping into the next one,” May said. The Scream star explained how she didn’t know much about DC Comics but accepted the part because she liked the concept.
“I was not familiar with that whole world of DC and all that stuff. People told me it was a big gig, and I went with it. I thought it was actually really funny, and I really liked the creative team behind it.”
May later detailed the process of moving on after the film was canceled, saying:
“You get flown out, you try on costumes, and suddenly, like a week after the announcement, you get a call from the director saying, ‘Well, David Zaslav is in power now and all of these things have shifted and he doesn’t wanna do this film.’ And, like, I get it. I’m not upset about it or anything. I get it. It’s just the way that the business functions and it’s all OK, but you suddenly this thing you that was gonna be a part of your future for a certain amount of time is suddenly just not there. So now you have to reassess.”
The Wonder Twins were created by Norman Maurer, Bill Hanna, and Joe Barbera as part of The All-New Superfriends Hour. The twin aliens activate their superpowers when they join their power rings together. May’s character Jaya can transform into any animal while Apa’s Zan can become water in any state. The characters were officially incorporated into the official DC Comics canon in 1995 and have since become a fan-favorite corner of the franchise. The Wonder Twins were first portrayed in live-action by David Gallagher and Allison Scagliotti on Smallville for the Season 9 episode “Idol.”
News of the live-action DCEU Wonder Twins movie, and its cancellation, moved fast. The project was first announced in Feb. 2022, with Isabel May and KJ Apa cast in April, one month before the film’s cancellation. The Wonder Twins film was part of a slate of movies slated for the DCEU but released exclusively on HBO Max. Other titles included Blue Beetle, Batgirl, and a Zatanna movie by Wuthering Heights’ director Emerald Fennell. Wonder Twins and Zatanna were canceled before cameras began to roll, while Batgirl was infamously canned after filming was completed and became lost media. More positively, Blue Beetle was upgraded to a theatrical release.
Wonder Twins was set to be written and directed by Adam Sztykiel in his directorial debut. Sztykiel had previously written Black Adam, and many suspected the Wonder Twins would be part of the planned Dwayne Johnson-led Black Adam expansion of the DCEU that the actor was teasing at the time, which would also have included a Justice Society spin-off and a Black Adam sequel with Henry Cavill’s Superman returning. 2022 was a rough transition year for DC, which, sadly, the Wonder Twins were caught in the middle of. Maybe there is a place for May and Apa to join James Gunn’s DCU as the Wonder Twins in the future.
This story originally appeared on Movieweb
