Wonder Woman 1984 had its grand opening on HBO Max & in theaters that have reopened during the pandemic & the result is the best 3-day opening in the COVID-19 box office era.
Wonder Woman 1984 grossed $16.7 million over the weekend which bests the 3-day openings of Tenet & the Croods sequel. While the opening is good by pandemic standards, it was down considerably from the $103.2 million opening of the first film, which was to be expected. The $200 million movie still has some factors in play for success but we’ll have to wait & see how it plays out. We’ll have to see if HBO Max will be transparent about how well or not well the film is doing on the streaming platform & there is international business to consider. The film did open soft overseas last week but this week saw new markets open which has resulted in a current worldwide tally of $85 million.
The opening is the best-case scenario given the circumstances. 60% of the 5,8K theater domestic market is still closed due to COVID-19, and that includes substantial box office markets like Los Angeles and New York. Wonder Woman 1984’s opening bests the results of Croods: A New Age‘s $9.7 million 3-day over Black Friday weekend, and Tenet‘s $9.3 million 3-day over Labor Day weekend. It should be noted that Wonder Woman had close to 40% of all theaters open, which repped 56% of its box office. This compared to Croods 2, which achieved its opening from 44% of all domestic theaters open, which repped 60% of the box office, versus Tenet, which had access to a marketplace where 55% of all theaters were open and repped 70% of the box office.
Where does Wonder Woman 1984 go from here? It’s really hard to say. In a normal box office climate, this would be one of the most lucrative times of the year for a film like this. The period between Christmas and New Year’s Day can make even lesser films potential box office hits but 2020 is certainly different and it’s hard to indicate what holiday boost the film is likely to get. There is also the issue of quality. Wonder Woman 1984 came out of the gate with an impressive Rotten Tomatoes score that dropped to 89% just days before its release. As the release date got closer, the reviews became even more mixed and now the film holds a 66% fresh rating and the audience score is an ok 73%. The first film was one of the best-reviewed movies of 2017 with a 93% fresh rating and a more impressive audience score of 84%. If you head over to IMDB, the user rating is a dismal 5.8 out of ten, compared to the current 7.4 rating of the first film. The response has been polarizing, to say the least, and that reaction could hurt the potential of non-fans heading to the theater or looking into an HBO Max subscription to watch it.
