Initial reports indicated that Wonder Woman destroyed the box office over its opening weekend, but you can now officially tip your hat to Patty Jenkins: her film had a total global opening weekend of $223 million, the highest US opening weekend for a woman director ever.
The Guardian reports $100.5 million of that came from the US alone, and overshot the previous record set by Sam Taylor-Johnson’s Fifty Shades of Grey, which clocked in at $82.5 million. Women are tired of sex and want to see men get their ass kicked is my analysis.
The money is also notably higher than other women-led comic book super hero/villain films, like Catwoman, which brought in $82 million worldwide, and Elektra, which grossed $57 million its opening weekend. Of course, both these films were released before the juggernaut of super hero franchises really got going and studios understood the formula for building up our panting expectations.
Still, the success of Wonder Woman is undeniable, and Entertainment Weekly reports that though there is no official word on a sequel, you can bet your bustier we’ll be seeing Gal Godot crack that whip again. Patty Jenkins was already reflecting on where she’ll send our hero in future adventures when she spoke with them in April, saying, “The story will take place in the US, which I think is right,” she said. “She’s Wonder Woman. She’s got to come to America. It’s time.”
“I’m not a big obligation person when it comes to art. You want to do a movie like this because you believe in it,” she said to Entertainment Weekly. “Then I had this revelation in the middle of the night: this is your dream cast, you’ve created a character that you love and you can say anything you want in the world right now.”
“Then I realized that Wonder Woman 2 is its own great movie. I made Wonder Woman. Now I want to make Wonder Woman 2. It’s a beautiful story to tell, an important time to tell it and with people that I love.”
DISCUSSION
I’m delighted with this, and extra delighted Patty is staying on for WW2 when (and it’s going to be when, shut up) it comes around.
Also, for the trolls who are all “Waaah it didn’t break records if you look at all the other comic book movies ever why are you using this woman caveat blaaahhhh”....if a female director wasn’t still such a freaking unicorn and if it were normal to have female directed blockbuster films (like, say, 50%, kind of like the population breakdown), then we wouldn’t need to be having this discussion. That’s the point.
Even without that caveat it’s still a notable achievement. For DC especially.