A few weeks ago I wouldn’t have found this week’s predictions to be that exciting but thanks to the early positive reception by critics for Wonder Woman, I think the film has potential to break out ahead of tracking and give the box office the jolt it needed last week during Memorial Day weekend.
Let’s discuss why DC and Warner Bros. NEED this film to do well. The new DCEU (DC Extended Universe for the non-nerds out there) has had a rough go at it since Man of Steel was released in 2013. That film received a rotten score of 55% on Rotten Tomatoes and grossed $291 million in the states on a $225 million budget. The film did gross a total of $668 million worldwide but when a studio spends that much on a film (the budget figure doesn’t include marketing costs) they truly expect more so there is a shade of disappointment, even if it looks like a hit on paper.
Next up we had Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice in 2016. That film combined the popular character of Batman with Superman and was expected to be a juggernaut. In fact, early word from screenings implied it was a good film but alas that was not to be. The film received a 28% rotten score on Rotten Tomatoes and topped out at $330.2 million on a reported $300 million budget. Keep in mind the film opened to $166 million but dropped a massive 68.4% in weekend two, which indicated poor word of mouth. This was a prime example of being frontloaded and it needed assistance from overseas grosses which brought in $873.3 million worldwide. Most box office experts have said that the film needed to make at least a billion dollars worldwide for the studio to see a true profit because of the budget, along with marketing costs, were pretty high.
Fans had more hope for Suicide Squad last summer because it looked to attempt something a bit different from the typical comic book movie but it also fell into the same critical trap of its predecessors. The film received a rotten score of 25% on Rotten Tomatoes but it fared a bit better on the box office end due to a smaller budget of $175 million. The film grossed $325 million domestically and $745.6 million worldwide. The box office success didn’t change the fact that this was the third film in a row to be a critical bust and it made a lot of fans worried about what was coming next.
This is why Wonder Woman appears to be a breath of fresh air. The film has a fresh rating of 94% on Rotten Tomatoes as of this writing and this makes it the best reviewed DC film since The Dark Knight Rises 5 years ago. Once all the good reviews came pouring in, interest in the film seemed to increase immensely and now it appears we may have a game changer on our hands.
To date, female comic-book superhero (or villain) movies have been a minority at the box office, not to mention they’ve even bombed, i.e. 1984’s Supergirl ($14.3 million domestic), 2004’s Catwoman ($82.1 million global) and 2005’s Elektra ($56.7 million global). Wonder Woman is a $300 million gamble for Warner Bros. in production and P&A costs. Catwoman before P&A cost $100 million 13 years ago and was an early textbook example in social media fanboys sealing a comic book movie’s fate before it even opened — their complaints being over Halle Berry’s costume.
Wonder Woman is long overdue for her solo big-screen debut, after making a cameo in last year’s Warner Bros/DC Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice (it should be noted that even critics that dismissed that film, pointed her out as a highlight). Joss Whedon was expected to make a Wonder Woman movie for Warner Bros. 10 years ago. When the plug was pulled on that project, the studio tried to adapt Wonder Woman for TV with a 2011 David E. Kelley NBC pilot starring Adrianne Palicki, which didn’t go to series.
All that being said, this appears to be her time and I think the box office is ready for her after some lackluster weekends the last couple of weeks. The early tracking had this opening in the $65 million range but I’m going to call $80-85 million and I wouldn’t be surprised if it went higher if word of mouth from fans proves to be solid.
Check back here on Monday for the final box office results
