Five years. Still no cameras rolling. At this point, Gal Gadot’s Cleopatra has spent longer in development hell than some directors spend on their entire careers. And yet — it’s not dead. Weirdly, stubbornly, it keeps crawling forward. Here’s the honest rundown.
Morocco, Universal, and reasons to maybe believe it this time
Universal Pictures and Atlas Entertainment are the current owners of the project. Morocco is where they plan to shoot — Ouarzazate territory, the same dusty landscape Ridley Scott used for Gladiator II. Smart choice, practically speaking. The infrastructure is there. The light is right. The locals have been through enough sword-and-sandal productions that nobody panics when a Legion shows up.
Late 2026, maybe 2027. That’s the window being talked about. According to CBR’s report on the Cleopatra movie, the project is in active development with Morocco confirmed as the filming destination. The script has been through multiple drafts. Writers were still working on it during the strike, which is either dedication or desperation — hard to say which.
Patty Jenkins left. Nobody fully recovered.
The original plan had Jenkins directing, fresh off the Wonder Woman films. That fell apart in December 2021 — scheduling, apparently. Kari Skogland stepped in. She did The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, which was fine. Serviceable. Nobody was handing out awards.
Directing a prestige ancient world epic is a different beast entirely. Whether Skogland is the right person for that — genuinely unclear. The studio seems to think so. Audiences will form their own opinions once a trailer exists.
Laeta Kalogridis is still writing. Her résumé is uneven — Terminator: Genisys happened, and the internet remembers — but Gadot keeps praising the script publicly, which at minimum means she’s read it and likes it.
Gadot’s pitch: forget the soap opera version
Every film about Cleopatra eventually becomes a story about who she slept with. Caesar. Antony. Roll credits. Gadot’s stated goal is to burn that template down.
She talks about Cleopatra the way a producer talks about IP they’re genuinely excited about — as a political operator, a military strategist, someone who kept a fractured kingdom intact through sheer intelligence while Rome was trying to swallow everything in sight. Whether that ambition survives contact with a studio’s marketing department is a separate conversation.
The casting argument. Again.
It started in 2020. It hasn’t stopped. Gadot is Israeli; Cleopatra was Macedonian Greek; the film is set in Egypt. That combination irritated a lot of people simultaneously, from different directions, for different reasons.
Her defense was blunt: Cleopatra wasn’t Egyptian by blood, she was Greek. They looked for a Macedonian actress. Didn’t find one. Gadot took the role. Historically, that argument holds water. Culturally, it satisfies nobody — which, at this point, seems to be the fixed condition of any Cleopatra project regardless of who’s cast.
Netflix proved that in 2023. Their Queen Cleopatra docuseries cast a Black actress. Egyptian media called it falsification of history. Critics in the West mostly shrugged. Everyone was angry at something.
Zendaya, Villeneuve, and the competition that isn’t really competition yet
Denis Villeneuve is developing his own Cleopatra — an adaptation of Stacy Schiff’s biography, with Zendaya as the heavily-rumored lead. Timothée Chalamet reportedly offered a role. Daniel Craig’s name got floated.
None of that is confirmed. And Villeneuve is finishing Dune: Messiah first. His Cleopatra is years away, minimum. Angelina Jolie’s version — also once a real project — is gone entirely.
So Gadot’s is the one actually moving. First to screens, if it ever gets there. Right now, 2027 is the bet. Don’t put money on it yet.