Wonder Woman shows off severed heads in unused 1850s pic created for Batman v Superman

The world may now know Wonder Woman as a firm believer in love and kindness, but a slightly different version of the iconic character almost made it onto the big screen. 

Director Zack Snyder recently shared an unused photo from his film Batman v Superman, which first introduced Diana Prince to the DC universe of films during an interview with The Nerd Queens podcast. The image (below) features the Amazonian Princess during the Crimean War as she stands surrounded by a group of soldiers and holding a spear as well as three severed heads. 

While it's not clear if she's responsible for them, it's a good guess that she might be, based on her stance and the blade on the weapon she's carrying, seeing as most of the other people around her are carrying guns. 

The photo was used as a placeholder in the film before director Patty Jenkins (Star Wars: Rogue Squadron) was hired to direct what would become Diana's origin story: Wonder Woman.  

But while the setting for the 2017 film is a lot different from what was seemingly proposed in this image — taking place during World War I instead of the Crimean War — it appears that the blueprints of what would go on to become many of the supporting characters in the first Jenkins-directed film were around even back then, namely Sameer (Saïd Taghmaoui) and Chief Napi (Eugene Brave Rock), both of whom were members of Diana's team as she ventured into the frontlines of the war in search of the god Ares (David Thewlis). There's also a chance that the man standing on her right could have been an earlier version of Steve Trevor — pre-eventual 80s makeover, of course!

It's clear from the image, that this version of the character would have been quite different from the one fans around the world are familiar with, especially with 2020's follow up Wonder Woman 1984 focusing on her attempts to save the world through empathy. However, as Jenkins mentioned on Marc Maron's WTF podcast, there were at least 30 versions of the first movie's script when she first came on board the project in 2004, each with different approaches. 

"During that period of time, there were so many scripts, I could see the writing on the wall," said Jenkins of WW's long road to production. "The was an internal war on every level about what Wonder Woman should be." 

It was only after director Michelle MacLaren (Game of Thrones) eventually left the project that WB approached Jenkins again and allowed her to make the movie she wanted to make — barring Diana's final confrontation with Ares. Since then she's gone on to helm WW1984 and is already working on the third instalment featuring the now-global icon, with Gal Gadot returning to star in it. 

Wonder Woman 1984 is now streaming on HBO Max and is available to view in select theaters. Zack Snyder's cut of Justice League hits the streaming service sometime this year.