Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/06/05/wonder-woman-smashes-box-offic.html
…
5 Likes
Could it be because there’s a huge number of people out there starved for a female superheroine movie that doesn’t suck? Nah.
It will be angering but quite interesting to see the mental gymnastics hollywood’s executives go through after this to continue to claim that they don’t need to make big budget movies for women because girls don’t go to movies by themselves, and they let their boyfriends pick what movies to go to, so just carry on making movies about all guys all the time and their job is done, time for golf.
27 Likes
I suspect what will actually happen is a slew of hastily produced attempts to reproduce this success, because those dollar signs are going to look awfully good to even the worst misogynists in Hollywood. A lot of these will suck, because they will be thrown together haphazardly, and that lack of success will allow those execs to then write Wonder Woman off as a one time fluke and go back to business as usual. #totallynotcynical
41 Likes
Loved Wonder Woman.
Totally turned off by the Justice League trailer.
8 Likes
Saw that in the theater in Tokyo the other night. Looked really bad. We dont get Wonder Woman until August 25th and there have been zero trailers in theaters so far.
2 Likes
Lets see how fast a Black Widow movie suddenly gets green-lit.
10 Likes
Eh… All they have done so far for JL is focus briefly on assembling the team and show off the action. Which a team up film like this is. Early Avengers trailers were smilar. I’m waiting for closer to release trailers to show some real meat of the film.
1 Like
DC has been addicted to churning out grimdark crap for well over a decade, and it seems to have infected Warner and thus the movies they are making. Even when grimdark obviously fails to work (the recent superman and batman v superman movies), they keep doubling down on it.
Sadly I suspect that Wonder Woman is going to be a fluke as far as the DC cinematic universe goes.
6 Likes
Maybe, but the Captain Marvel movie is already in the pipeline, so it wouldn’t be until after that.
5 Likes
not really. it’s the worst opening for a DC movie to date with the opening weekend making less than Suicide Squad and Man of Steel.
I mean it’s no failure by a long shot but not exactly proof that there’s a huge market starved for female superheroes either.
You forget that what matters in Hollywood is not the total numbers but the ratio of income to budget. It’s incredibly stupid, but a movie’s budget dictates the amount spent on publicity for it, which plays a huge role in how many tickets it sells.
And equally stupidly, the decision of whether to make a sequel often depends on how much of the budget the film made back in its initial release in domestic theatres, ignoring international sales and home viewing sales.
9 Likes
I liked the movie. I had my typical suspension of disbelief issues I have with all superhero movies, but it was a good story. My wife, who is a big comic reader, informed me that Diana Prince (mild spoiler) was not a god in the comics. I wonder why they went that way in the movie.
The thing that surprised me the most was recognizing the name Steve Mnuchin in the end credits as Executive Producer. A quick google search after the credits ended confirmed it is Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Not sure what to think about that.
5 Likes
that’s still less money than Suicide Squad.
Really the best you can hope for is that the movie doesn’t have the same audience hemorrhaging that other DC movies have had and gets a more impressive bottom line.
Plus that only shows they should spend less money on their movies.
That means at No. 16, Wonder Woman beat out the openings of the first two Thor and Captain America movies, as well as the first Iron Man ($98.6 million).
10 Likes
The best review of the franchise I saw was in a review of Suicide Squad, which called the entire run from Superman on “antagonistic to fun”. That sums it up pretty well. Haven’t seen Wonder Woman yet, so I’m encouraged to hear it’s not so grimdark.
Fundamentally dreading Aquaman though. Q: How do you screw up “King Arthur in a fantastic underwater setting”? A: Ask DC to publish it.
I’m sorry - but a female action hero will just never work.
29 Likes
That is what I have been saying for years.
1 Like
Maybe not the golden age comics Wonder Woman, I’m not sure, but the current incarnation is absolutely a Goddess. And that’s not really a secret, so not a spoiler.
7 Likes
Don’t bet on that. there is a huge difference between Wonder Woman and Black Widow as marketable characters. BW works fine in an ensemble group. WW is the third largest bankable character for DC after Supes and Bats.
The question would be what other female heroes have both the cache within the comic medium to be marketable to a larger audience, as well as having the ability to carry a film. As @danimagoo points out, Carol Danvers (Captain Marvel) is on Marvel’s radar. Wasp is up too for a dual lead film along with Ant-man. The remaining bigger names on the list are part of ensembles save She-Hulk and Spider-woman.
As for DC…Zatana is really the best case scenario for them. Unless they want to try a Batgirl/Barbara Gordon as a lead. Everyone else is either ensemble based, or not marketable or transferable to the big screen (Big Barda is the biggest - no pun intended - that comes to mind. A flick of her and Mister Miracle would be incredible fun but won’t happen).
To me the success if this film is about DC being able to actually make a good hero flick. They still have issues around the tone being too dark and not light-hearted enough. Whether they have done this specifically to contrast themselves against Marvel remains to be seen. It’s just a shame. So many of the DC animated films are so good and their live action have been so dreadful.
3 Likes
Fair enough. I don’t think my wife is reading the current incarnation.
