Gal Gadot teased the first details of the upcoming Wonder Woman movie during a panel celebrating the character’s 75th birthday in comics at San Diego Comic-Con. The movie is an origin story and begins on the all-female island Themyscira where Diana Prince was born. Her world is turned upside down when she discovers a man, Steve Trevor (Chris Pine), washed up ashore.
“She grew up in Themyscira where she was very safe and protected, and she thought she knew everything that there was to know about the world,” said Gadot. “When she left Themyscira to go the world of men, she realized there’s so much more to learn and so much she doesn’t understand.”
“Like the great origin stories, it has a classic coming-of-age arc. She starts wanting to save the world and do the right thing,” added director Patty Jenkins. “She doesn’t realize that she has something to do with the gods. You’re looking at a god coming into mankind, she’s a god seeing what mankind is capable of, what an incredible story arc that creates.”
Jenkins also said that she has wanted to do a Wonder Woman movie since she was a little girl, and this felt like the right moment to finally bring the story to the big screen.
Gadot agreed. “I’m not really a spiritual person, many times it felt like we got signs from the universe, swear to God, it felt like we were just a vessel for a greater story we needed to share with everyone,” she said. “We were treating the story in almost a holy way with so much respect, that it felt like now was the time.”
Wonder Woman hits theaters June 2, 2017.
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Write to Eliana Dockterman at eliana.dockterman@time.com