Three years after its announcement, the way forward for Warner Bros.’s Surprise Girl recreation is reportedly in query – with its launch stated to nonetheless be “years away” if it ever launches in any respect.
That is in accordance with a brand new report by Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, detailing the behind-the-scenes turmoil attributable to a tradition of “ineffectual trend-chasing and wasted growth time” at Warner Bros. Interactive Leisure through the tenure of outgoing president David Haddad – a interval stated to have lacked a “robust, cohesive imaginative and prescient” .
Some casualties of Warner Bros.’s reported tradition underneath Haddad are already well-documented, with Warner Bros. Montreal’s Gotham Knights, Rocksteady’s Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, get together brawler MultiVersus, and final yr’s Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions all having did not resonate with shoppers. Nevertheless, Bloomberg’s report additionally highlights a lot of different initiatives which have both failed or floundered behind closed doorways.
Monolith’s Surprise Girl recreation, as an example, has reportedly “struggled to coalesce” within the years since its announcement in 2021, with the mission having switched administrators and been rebooted early final yr, in accordance with “folks conversant in the enterprise”. Surprise Girl is claimed to have already value Warner $100m and continues to be “years away from launch”, if it manages to make it to market in any respect – its destiny, in accordance with Bloomberg’s sources, “stays in query”.
Bloomberg stories Monolith had initially needed to comply with its acclaimed Center-earth video games with a brand new franchise experimenting with procedural storytelling. Nevertheless, Warner Bros. execs are stated to have pushed for the studio to include one of many firm’s large IPs, and the ensuing recreation “plodded alongside for greater than three years” earlier than its cancellation – at which level Monolith head Kevin Stephens and plenty of administrators departed. After that, remaining employees started engaged on Surprise Girl, initially making an attempt to include a model of Shadow of Mordor’s Nemesis system earlier than switching to a “extra conventional action-adventure recreation”.
As revealed final March, Gotham Knights studio Warner Bros. Montreal has now been drafted in to assist Monolith get Surprise Girl over the end line. Nevertheless, Bloomberg says the Montreal crew was initially hoping to make a recreation based mostly on comedian e-book antihero John Constantine – hopes that have been dashed when execs pushed the crew towards a “extra recognisable character” such because the Joker or Flash. The studio in the end opted to make a Flash recreation, however the mission was scrapped after Warner’s 2023 Flash film flopped on the field workplace – resulting in the resignation of “most of” Montreal’s management crew. The studio is now stated to be engaged on a pitch for a Sport of Thrones title, because it continues to assist out on Surprise Girl.
Bloomberg’s sources say the foremost gaps in Warner Bros. Interactive Leisure’s portfolio left by the corporate’s string of cancellations and industrial failures throughout Haddad’s tenure are more likely to persist “for the subsequent yr or two”. There’s one potential brilliant spot on the horizon, nonetheless, with developer Rocksteady – following the demise of its live-service-focused Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League – now stated to be “seeking to return to Batman for a single-player recreation”. The mission, although, continues to be “years away from touchdown”.
