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Gal Gadot is Wonder Woman in, well, 'Wonder Woman'


 

Gal Gadot is Wonder Woman in, well, 'Wonder Woman'

Warner Bros. and DC Comics

Gal Gadot is Wonder Woman in, well, 'Wonder Woman'

As you know, Wonder Woman scorched the worldwide box office this weekend, delivering a whopping $100.5 million in North America. And in just three-to-five days (depending on where you live), the Patty Jenkins film, starring a winning Gal Gadot and a game Chris Pine, has already made history and kicked box office butt. So, rather than drone on about what you already know, let’s get right to it…

Wonder Woman scored the biggest opening weekend for a female director.

There haven’t been all that many blockbuster openings from films that were directed by women, because the vast majority of movies are directed by men. But yes, the film earned more in its Fri-Sun frame than Sam Taylor-Johnson’s Fifty Shades of Grey, which earned $85m over the Fri-Sun portion of its $94m Fri-Mon debut weekend. The next biggest such openings for a solo female-directed flick, in case you were wondering, belong to Catherine Hardwicke’s Twilight ($69.6m in 2008), Elizabeth Banks’ Pitch Perfect 2 ($69.2m in 2015) and Jennifer Yuh Nelson’s Kung Fu Panda 2 ($47.6m Fri-Sun/$66m Thurs-Mon).

It also earned the sixth-biggest non-sequel comic book superhero debut ever, as well as the sixth-biggest June debut weekend. Oh, and it has the biggest debut ever for this first weekend-in-June slot. But yeah, it proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that a female-directed blockbuster about a female hero could open even higher than the likes of Logan, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy, Doctor Strange and The Amazing Spider-Man 2. So yeah, your move A Wrinkle in Time!

No Batman? No Superman? No problem!

Want to know what the biggest grossing DC Comics release without Batman or Superman was up to this moment? It’s Constantine, as the Keanu Reeves horror thriller (which was sold more as supernatural actioner that happened to be based on a comic book) earned $75m in North America and $230m worldwide in early 2005. After that, it’s Green Lantern ($116m domestic/$219m worldwide in 2011), Watchmen ($109m/$185m in 2009) and Red ($90m/$199m in 2010). That’s right, the Bruce Willis/Morgan Freeman/Mary Louise Parker/Helen Mirren action comedy made more worldwide than Watchmen.

Up to this point, DC Comics has never had an outright smash hit without Batman or Superman showing up to play. That changed this weekend. Yes, there is a reference to Bruce Wayne in the film’s book-end sequences, but you never see Ben Affleck in or out of the Batman suit. And there is zero reference to the currently deceased Superman. This victory belongs to Wonder Woman and Wonder Woman alone. Even Suicide Squad was sold with sequences involving Batman (and Batman baddies like The Joker and Harley Quinn) along with a genuine movie star like Will Smith. But now they have just such a thing.

Heck, at this point, we may see a DC Films where Wonder Woman, instead of (or along with) Batman, is at the center of the universe. But that’s for another day.

Wonder Woman is already the biggest-grossing female-led comic book superhero movie ever.

There have only been a handful of comic book superhero movies (or really, any kind of action-based comic book adaptations) with women in the lead role. The prior such offerings are Tanya Roberts' Sheena ($5.8 million in 1984), Helen Slater's Supergirl ($14.2m in 1984), Bridget Nielsen's Red Sonja ($7m in 1985), Lori Petty's Tank Girl ($4m in 1995), Pamela Anderson's Barb Wire ($3.8m in 1996), Halle Berry's Catwoman ($40.2m in 2004), Jennifer Garner's Elektra ($24.4m in 2005) and Scarlett Johansson's Ghost in the Shell ($40.5m in 2017).

So that’s a combined domestic total of $136.1 million. Wonder Woman just made $100.5m in the first three days of release. Not only did Wonder Woman best that arbitrary high-point in a single day, it is 74% of the way from besting the combined totals of all those films. Now in terms of worldwide gross, most of those films don’t have super useful overseas numbers (I have no idea what Supergirl made in Europe back in 1984) but I can tell you with total confidence that Elektra, Catwoman and Tank Girl did not end their runs with $200 million+ worldwide totals. If they had, we’ve probably have more than just nine female-led comic book superhero movies.

So yeah, Wonder Woman is already setting a new level for success in this sadly underserved sub-genre.

It was a DC Comics movie that played like a Marvel Cinematic Universe movie.

At least for a weekend, Wonder Woman played less like a “for the fans” DCEU offering and more like a general audience hit. The last three DC Films movies (and The Dark Knight Rises) pulled in large percentages of their opening weekend on Thursday night (16-19%). They then had lousy weekend multipliers. You had a 2.13x for The Dark Knight Rises ($75m Friday/$160m weekend) and a 2.28x for Man of Steel ($56m/$128m), and a 2.0x for Batman v Superman ($81m/$166m) and Suicide Squad ($65m/$133m).

The MCU films tend to pull in around 10-14% of their opening weekends on Thursday with multipliers over/under 2.5x that Friday number. This weekend, Wonder Woman played like a Marvel movie. It earned $11 million on Thursday, well below the preview totals for Man of Steel ($21m), Batman v Superman ($27.7m) and Suicide Squad ($20m). But it made $38.85m on its first Friday, including the Thursday preview gross, and went on to snag a whopping $101m debut weekend.

That was a 2.58x weekend multiplier, right in line with the likes of The Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy, Ant-Man, Thor and Captain America. That's the best Fri-Sun multiplier for a DC Comics superhero movie that didn't open on a Wednesday since It earned just 11% of its weekend total from Thursday previews, which is right in the MCU comfort zone. The opening weekend was spread out all weekend and wasn’t just driven by **** fan support and pre-release ticket sales.

And if it plays accordingly, we're looking at a domestic total of $241 million (2.4x like The Incredible Hulk), $271m (2.7x like Thor and Captain America) or $301m and beyond (3x like Ant-Man or Guardians of the Galaxy). Or maybe somewhere in between, but you get the idea. But in their quest to stand alongside Marvel, DC has its first unqualified artistic and commercial triumph by virtue of doing something that the MCU has yet to accomplish. By all means, learn nothing from that.

Wonder Woman has proven decades of conventional wisdom to be wrong.

How many times have we heard about, or heard people talking about, the notion that girl-powered superhero movies stink and/or girl-powered superhero movies are box office poison? We know, Catwoman was weird and awful. Yes, Elektra was dull and awful. Sure, Tank Girl was… well, I like Tank Girl, but you get the idea.

And as you can see from the numbers noted above, the few comic book superhero adaptations with a female lead did tend to be mega-bombs. So, what was different about Wonder Woman? In a word, everything. It was the perfect storm of all the right choices and all the right results.

It was an expensive ($150 million) adventure movie, one with as much explosions, fighting and spectacle as any big-budgeted dude-centric superhero movie. It was directed by a woman, only the third time in history that a female filmmaker got a crack at a comic book movie, and certainly the first time with a budget of over $30m. It was based on a defining comic book superhero who stood alone, not a female version of a male hero or a supporting character from a male comic book story.

And, yeah, it was darn good too, earning mostly rave reviews and scorching word-of-mouth. Without star power, without team-ups and without Batman cameos, the movie kicked ass and defied the skeptics. Wonder Woman bucked every bit of conventional wisdom this weekend. If you make a big-budget female-led superhero movie, one as explosive, sweeping and action-paced as a Batman movie or a Spider-Man movie, if you make sure it’s at least as good as a mid-level MCU offering, then yeah, audiences will definitely show up.Wonder Woman came, audiences saw and thus Wonder Woman conquered.

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