Gal Gadot Wonder Woman Gets A Deepfake? DC Director Responds To Allegations
A Wonder Woman appearance at the end of Shazam! Fury of the Gods had fans wondering if Warner Bros. had deepfaked Gal Gadot's face onto another actress's body.
It appears that DC didn’t learn their lesson from the whole Henry Cavill debacle and put a Wonder Woman cameo at the end of Shazam! Fury of the Gods. The Gal Gadot cameo is also causing controversy, but not for the same reason as the one in Black Adam. Behind-the-scenes photos posted to Twitter of actress Taylor Cahill in the Wonder Woman suit have fans questioning whether Gadot’s Shazam appearance was a deepfake.
Twitter user @maybegrayson kicked off the controversy by posting two pictures from the Fury of the Gods set. Both pictures show actress Taylor Cahill standing in for Gal Gadot. The pics led Twitter fans to question whether Gal’s face had simply been pasted on Cahill’s body or, worse, created completely from CGI.
YouTube creator Grace Randolph seemingly fanned the flames by retweeting the original photo with the quote, “Wait, I thought WBD was trying to SAVE money.” It was Randolph’s tweet that got the attention of Shazam! Fury of the Gods director David F. Sandberg. Sandberg immediately tried to squash the rumor that he used a deepfake of Gal Gadot into the movie.
Sandberg explained in the tweet that he shot the Gal Gadot scene with Taylor to get the coverage he needed to add Gadot in later. According to the director, the Israeli Actress “couldn’t make it to Atlanta,” so he had to shoot her separately and then insert her over Cahill. So while Gal was never on set, the performance was, in fact, hers.
Having actors who have never set foot in the same room in the same scene is nothing new for Hollywood. The advancement of CGI has allowed directors to shoot actors wherever they may be and then composite them into any scene they want. Post-COVID, this has become a common practice for actors in a variety of films.
David F. Sandberg even employed the technique on the previous Shazam!…or at least he tried to. In a separate tweet, the director admitted that he did the same thing for the previous movie, hoping to add Henry Cavill over a stand-in wearing a Superman costume. Sadly Cavill’s cameo never happened forcing Sandberg to use his stand-in footage instead.
Most fans accepted Sandberg’s explanation for Taylor Cahill’s involvement in the scene. IMDb even lists Cahill’s official credit as “Fake Wonder Woman,” further supporting the director’s claim. Unfortunately, Sandberg’s second tweet opened up a whole other can of worms: why wasn’t Henry Cavill in the first Shazam! movie?
Snyderverse fans have tried as hard as they can to make Henry Cavill a martyr as of late and have now dragged David F. Sandberg into it. Several replies to Sandberg’s tweet about the first Shazam! chastised Warner Bros. for not giving the filmmaker a reason for Cavill’s absence and lamented DC‘s perceived unfair treatment of poor Henry.
Wonder Woman’s cameo at the end of Fury of the Gods further muddies the waters already soiled by Henry Cavill’s appearance at the end of Black Adam. Was the brief scene the last time we will ever see Gal Gadot in the iconic costume, or will she join Viola Davis as one of the few remnants of the Snyderverse to survive James Gunn’s new DCU? Only time will tell.
At least we know that if she does come back, it will really be her and not some dead-eyed AI-created CGI nightmare. Warner Bros. can leave the deepfakes to Disney.
