We just got word that Wonder Woman will be getting a day-and-date release with China. And we also got word that the film's first tracking suggests a debut anywhere from $65 million to $105 million, which is a bit of a gap. The smaller number (so says Hollywood Reporter and Deadline) is on par with the first Thor and Captain America films and above Ant-Man and the second Wolverine spin-off. The higher number (so says The Wrap) would be an unmitigated blowout win, posting a bigger opening than any MCU offering outside the month of May. If those lower numbers seems lower than what we hoped, you should know that Logan's first tracking was at around $65m and it ended up with $88m, especially if the reviews sing the right note. Initial tracking can be wrong and that's doubly true for films that don't necessarily target primarily white dudes.
Anyway, the China day-and-date news means, starting with Belgium on May 31, that the Patty Jenkins comic book actioner will be playing in much of the world by Friday, June 2. So the only question is whether the film will take longer than five days to cross the entire $216 million global gross of Green Lantern. At which point, by default, it will be the biggest DC Comics superhero adaptation ever without Superman, Batman and/or The Joker in a major role. If that seems like a small hill to climb, that’s because it is.
There is going to be a lot of discussion over the next three weeks about what qualifies as “success” for the much anticipated tentpole. It’s a little too late to do a “pessimistic/optimistic” prediction series, so I just wanted to take a moment to detail some arbitrary milestones and discuss expectations. First, assuming the film cost anything close to the official $120 million budget, the picture doesn’t have to come anywhere near the likes of Suicide Squad ($745m) or Doctor Strange ($677m), especially if it’s any good, to be considered a hit.
Watch On Forbes:
In the summer of 2015, the $130 million Ant-Man was (correctly) crowned as a winner for Disney and Marvel after earning $181m domestic and $519m worldwide. In 2013, The Wolverine grossed $132m domestic (not great) and $414m worldwide (not bad) on a $120m budget. Sure, The Wolverine wasn’t a blowout win, but its quality led the way to the $608m-grossing Logan four years later. And yeah, I think Ant-Man and the Wasp has a solid shot of earning something closer to Captain America: The Winter Soldier’s $714m gross when it debuts a year from July.
Now this was six years ago and in a different marketplace, but Thor earned $449 million worldwide in 2011, well below the likes of Rise of the Planet of the Apes ($480m in 2D) and Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows ($545m in 2D) and was still (at the time) the biggest comic book superhero movie ever that didn’t star Batman, Iron Man, Wolverine or Spider-Man. Speaking of superhero movies in the summer of 2011, here’s something that’s been on my mind of late. If you look back at the recent history of DC Comics superhero movies (I’m not talking about stuff like Red or The Losers), they all open darn well.
Back in 2009, Warner Bros. sold a 2.75-hour, R-rated, star-free adaption of Alan Moore’s Watchmen to what turned out to be a $55 million debut weekend. Sure, we knew then that it wasn’t big enough because we knew Zack Snyder’s film (which was good but not good enough to entrap the non-fans) would sink like a stone, which it did to the tune of just $107m domestic and $185m worldwide, but that opening by itself was darn impressive.
As much as Martin Campbell’s Green Lantern entered the marketplace in June of 2011 as damaged goods (bad reviews, poorly received marketing, poor buzz, etc.), it still opened with $53m. While the property had its fans, it’s not like the world at-large was clamoring for a Green Lantern movie starring the guy from Van Wilder. Had it been any better received, it may well have been something approaching a hit (or at least a disappointment in relation to its $200m budget).
And as much as Bryan Singer’s (too expensive at $270 million) Superman Returns didn’t quite click in the summer of 2006, it still opened better than Batman Begins ($84m over five days vs. $72m), legged it to $200m domestic and made more worldwide ($391m vs. $371m) than the Chris Nolan Batman movie. And yeah, Man of Steel’s boffo $128m opening weekend (counting Thursday previews) is still the second-biggest non-sequel debut in history behind only The Hunger Games ($152m in 2D). It didn’t quite hold up ($291m domestic and $668m worldwide), but at the time it became the biggest comic book movie ever sans Batman, Spider-Man or Iron Man.
DC Comics movies open big at least partially because they are DC Comics movies and the characters clearly have a place in pop culture. That’s why Suicide Squad opened with a whopping $133 million last August despite miserable reviews. And if The Hunger Games can notch a $152 million opening weekend, then I’m reasonably sure that Wonder Woman will be okay even if right now the dominate narrative is continuing claims about the lack of marketing (uh huh) and complaining about the promotional tie-ins (I think Coldstone, Dr. Pepper and Nascar evens out the ThinkThin tie-in).
But what is “okay” for the Gal Gadot offering? I’d like to remind everyone that Wonder Woman is a stand-alone prequel taking place in World War I with very little in the way of added value elements (no marquee villains, big stars, or ensemble team-up elements) beyond the fact that it’s finally a friggin’ Wonder Woman movie. This isn’t Captain America: Civil War, X-Men: Days of Future Past or Suicide Squad.
As such, anything remotely close to the $85-$95 million debuts of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Logan, Doctor Strange, Thor: The Dark World, Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Guardians of the Galaxy should be viewed as an absolute win at least in terms of proving that audiences will show up on opening weekend for a female-driven superhero movie.
If Thor: The Dark World is a success after an $85 million debut and $206m domestic finish, then Wonder Woman deserves the same relative courtesy. Obviously, the real battle will be overseas, as even Ghostbusters earned an okay $128m domestic from a $46m debut (a solid 2.78x multiplier) only to die badly outside of North America with just $228m worldwide on a $144m budget. And if Power Rangers was doing around as well overseas as it is in North America ($85m), we might be getting a sequel to the $90m production depending on how well it does in China this weekend.
But at least Wonder Woman is playing in China, which you couldn’t say about Deadpool, Ghostbusters and Suicide Squad. The big unknown in this situation is the whole “Is the film any good?” question. We’ll have an answer to that soon enough, and I will concede that the quality question will potentially change the equation one way or another. But until then here are some figures to ponder:
If Wonder Woman tops $231 million worldwide, it’ll pass Constantine as the biggest DC Comics release that doesn’t prominently feature Batman and/or Superman. If it tops the $463m gross of Lucy, it’ll be the biggest female-led superhero movie ever, excluding The Force Awakens and the final Twilight film (where Kristen Stewart became a vampire). Oh, and it need only earn $177m worldwide to displace War Horse as the biggest World War I movie ever, not accounting for inflation (sorry Sergeant York and Lawrence of Arabia).
The biggest-grossing live-action release with a female director currently remains Phyllida Lloyd’s Mamma Mia!, which earned $609 million worldwide (bigger than Iron Man’s $585m) back in 2008. And the biggest solo female-directed feature (Frozen was co-directed by Jennifer Lee and Chris Buck) is Jennifer Yuh Nelson’s Kung Fu Panda 2 with $665m worldwide back in 2011.
And if you want to play the “rank” game for a moment, a domestic gross over $225 million would easily put it among the biggest movies of the year in North America heading into November, behind only Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Beauty and the Beast and (presumably) Despicable Me 3 and Spider-Man: Homecoming. Yeah, Pirates 5 and Transformers 5 could replicate their prior over/under $245m domestic performances (and War for the Planet of the Apes could out gross its predecessor’s $210m U.S. cume), but that’s no guarantee. So even if Wonder Woman doesn’t soar to infinity and beyond, it’s still almost certain, providing it doesn’t pull a Green Lantern, to end the summer in a pretty darn good place.
We’re in the home stretch now, folks. The marketing has kicked into high-gear as promised, especially as Warner Bros. knows King Arthur is probably a wash and needs to make sure their next biggie is in ship-shape (irony alert, but that’s for Monday), and everyone who pays even the slightest amount of attention to this stuff is aware of and excited to watch Gal Gadot toss tanks and hack-n-slash on the big screen. Oddly enough, it is the robust debut weekends for the likes of Superman Returns, Green Lantern and Watchmen that makes me more than confident about the relative potential of this potentially groundbreaking comic book superhero movie.
If Green Lantern, where everything went wrong and few were outright excited, can open above $50 million, then I think Wonder Woman is going to be okay. And if it turns out to be really good, kid-friendly or crowdpleasing, then the sky is the limit.
