UPDATE, September 7: Josh Horowitz bet Arjona $500 that she’s Wonder Woman, and she took the bet. She also says she knew the role when she auditioned.
UPDATE, August 30: A viral “set photo” of Arjona in the tiara has scored 98% likely AI-generated after 3.1 million views on X.
UPDATE, August 28: The Wonder Woman she’d be replacing just spoke up. Gal Gadot says she hasn’t “heard anything” from DC Studios since Gunn and Safran’s 2023 promise.
Adria Arjona has a new Man of Tomorrow update, and once again it reads like a page out of Cosmic Book News.
In a Screen Rant cover profile for A24’s Onslaught, published August 27, Arjona says she’s training two to three hours a day on a “crazy diet” for James Gunn’s Superman sequel and now has “muscles that I’ve never had in my life.”
Screen Rant also says she just kicked off filming. Gunn wrapped principal photography on August 26.
Asked which character all that training is for, Arjona gave the same answer she gave at Comic-Con: Gunn and Peter Safran are the family that gave her her first movie, and that’s all she’s going to say.
Deadline, which printed Maxima back in April, picked up the quotes and now describes her role as not yet disclosed.
As Cosmic Book News exclusively reported on June 28, our insiders say the role is Wonder Woman, the same ones who told us Hal Jordan dies in Lanterns five months before the episode aired, and which got us into trouble with HBO Max (no, we’re not being sued). These are also the same insiders who told us first about Daredevil: Born Again getting retooled, which the trades confirmed months later.
A Superhero Body For A Role DC Won’t Name
Start with the training, because that’s what everyone is sharing.
Two to three hours a day. A diet strict enough that coffee is the only thing keeping her upright. Muscles she has never had.
That’s prep for a character who has to look the part the second she walks into frame.
Even a one-scene debut needs the body to sell it. Milly Alcock got one scene as Supergirl in Superman and still had to show up looking like Supergirl.
Four months after her casting broke, DC and James Gunn still haven’t said which character Arjona is building that body for. Variety and Deadline printed Maxima in April. The Hollywood Reporter called it a mystery role. DC Studios declined to comment. Now Deadline says it’s undisclosed.
Since then, Arjona has been asked about Wonder Woman on camera at Comic-Con and in print by Screen Rant. She has never once said the name Maxima.
A simple “I’m playing Maxima” ends the question. She keeps not saying it.
She Started Filming Right Before Wrap
Now the part that matters more than the muscles.
At San Diego Comic-Con in late July, Arjona told Collider she still hadn’t shot a frame of Man of Tomorrow. That was three months into a production that started rolling in late April.
Our read at the time: a placeholder role that could still swing between two characters doesn’t shoot in the first block of production. It films late, once the script settles.
Now Screen Rant says she just kicked off filming, in an article that went up the day after Gunn called wrap.
Whenever that interview was taped, Arjona’s scenes landed in the final weeks of a four-month shoot, the last block, exactly where we said they would.
Cameos get written, finalized, and shot late.
Frank Grillo came back to set seven weeks after announcing he’d wrapped. Blue Beetle joined the pile. Arjona’s turn came in the final weeks.
It also lines up with what we reported on August 12: insiders say Arjona’s Wonder Woman is more of a cameo, in a movie Gunn is stacking with fan service because this may be his last one at DC.
Under the Paramount merger agreement, any long-term DC deal needs Paramount’s blessing, which is why Man of Tomorrow keeps signing short, one-appearance cameo deals that stay under Paramount’s review threshold.
A one-appearance deal doesn’t need to shoot in April. It can wait until August.
Related
- Adria Arjona Is Wonder Woman In Gunn’s Man of Tomorrow (Exclusive)
- Adria Arjona Won’t Deny She’s Wonder Woman At Comic-Con: “I’m With Family”
- Adria Arjona Hasn’t Filmed Man of Tomorrow Yet: Why It Points To Wonder Woman
- Why Man of Tomorrow Keeps Adding Cameos: They’re The Contracts Paramount Never Sees
- Waller And Paradise Lost Dead At DCU, Per Report: So Much For ‘Extreme Development’
- Sydney Sweeney Suits Up As Wonder Woman: Adria Arjona ‘Likes’ The Post
- Man of Tomorrow Wraps Filming â Fans Think The Final Location Is Salvation
