Box Office: Warner Bros. Can Turn ‘Wonder Woman 1984’ Into The Next ‘Star Wars,’ ‘Avatar’ Or ‘Aquaman’

Gal Gadot and Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman 1984 isn’t going straight to streaming. But if Warner Bros. must delay the DC Films sequel, December 18, making it this year’s Star Wars, Aquaman or Avatar, would be ideal.

No, Wonder Woman 1984 is not (as of now) skipping theaters and going straight to streaming. Warner Bros. denied it, and (all due respect) even the article that spurred the chatter yesterday was full of on-the-record denials. The Warner Bros. superhero sequel is going to inspire a lot of chatter for the near future because it’s the biggest summer flick that hasn’t moved its release date yet. The film is slated for June 5, three years to the weekend that the first Wonder Woman opened. And unlike Black Widow, F9 and Minions: The Rise of Gru, it’s thus far sticking put. But in all likelihood, Wonder Woman 1984 will eventually get delayed. It’s just a question of when and to where.

This isn’t Trolls: World Tour (which is debuting on VOD next month), a sequel to a “fine” animated flick that earned $346 million worldwide back in late 2016. The DreamWorks animated musical was in danger of being one of those “folks were only curious the first time” and “adults showed up last time, but this time it’s just for kids” animated sequels. Wonder Woman was a much-loved blockbuster that earned rave reviews, superb word of mouth and became what is still the leggiest $100 million-plus opener ($412.5 million from a $103.5 million launch) ever. Since its success was partially rooted in A) its quality and B) marquee characters (Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman and Chris Pine’s Steve Trevor), audiences absolutely will show up.

There’s no precedent yet for a movie to debut on streaming and earn anywhere near the $821 million global cume that Wonder Woman earned in theaters. Even, for example, Return of Jafar earned “just” $300 million in VHS sales and rentals way back in 1994. Wonder Woman 1984 could end up with less here and abroad compared to Wonder Woman (again, maybe curiosity was a factor three years ago), but even a downturn comparable to Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (from $814 million in 2016 to $659 million in 2018, but just $155 million domestic) would still be far more than what might be generated in a VOD/streaming launch. The theatrical window remains ridiculously valuable for the kind of movie for which audiences still show up.

Wonder Woman 1984 was initially slated for December of 2019, then moved to early November of last year and then pushed to June of this year. That made sense on paper, especially after Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker moved from May of 2019 to December of 2019. The early June slot positioned Wonder Woman 1984 to again rule the domestic summer box office, and I’m guessing WB didn’t want to deal with both Star Wars IX and Frozen II (along with, for better or worse, Terminator: Dark Fate and Charlie’s Angels) all chomping at the “strong, empowered female action hero” pie. In retrospect, maybe the DC Films flick should have stayed put, but Wonder Woman 1984’s delay helped Joker leg out to $1.074 billion.

The movie was mostly finished in time to release last November or December. They don’t have the same unfortunate circumstance as Universal, which had to push Minions 2 because the coronavirus impacted Illumination’s French studios and thus prevented vital post-production work. Moreover, with just one trailer released back in December and a handful of posters dropped online (and, in some cases, into the real world), Warner Bros. hasn’t spent much on marketing the Patty Jenkins-directed tentpole. I’m sure the ideal scenario is that the coronavirus miraculously goes away by Memorial Day, leaving Warner Bros. with two weeks to flood the marketplace with advertising and offer Wonder Woman 1984 as the first “post-crisis” (sorry) biggie. But let’s presume that doesn’t happen, so when should WW84 open?

The obvious answer is that Wonder Woman 1984 is a 1600 lbs gorilla, and thus can sit wherever the hell it wants. I’d imagine opening it would be huge no matter when it opened, even Labor Day or the weekend after Thanksgiving (where, ironically, WB scored big with Tom Cruise’s The Last Samurai in 2003). That being said, presuming that WB doesn’t make the June date and doesn’t want to either A) drop it in early August like Guardians of the Galaxy and Suicide Squad or B) try to turn a famously poor weekend into a potential tentpole launching pad (like they did with It and Gravity), there is one ideal option. They can open Wonder Woman 1984 just before Christmas, on December 18, 2020.

First, all due respect, Denis Villeneuve’s big-budget adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune is as questionable a “big” Christmas release as we’ve seen (in terms of being the appointed “year-end fantasy offering”) since The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring started that unofficial trend back in 2001. It may be a leggy holiday hit, or it may be the second coming of Blade Runner 2049, with rave reviews but little interest outside of Film Twitter, although $242 million worldwide would have been okay for an R-rated, 2.5-hour, star-free and action-lite sci-fi drama had the film not cost $155 million. Nonetheless, if Warner Bros. wants to end the year on a surefire smash hit, then Wonder Woman 1984 is the best option.

James Wan’s Aquaman became the leggiest live-action superhero movie since The Mask in December of 2018, earning $335 million from a $72 million domestic cume as it earned a ridiculous $298 million in China on the way to $1.148 billion worldwide. While Wonder Woman 1984 may not pull identical numbers, comparable legs, especially if it’s good, wouldn’t shock me. Christmas movies, unless they are Star Wars episodes (Force Awakens was an exception) tend to be leggy as hell. The first two Hobbit prequels earned 3.5x their respective Fri-Sun debuts (Battle of the Five Armies opened on a Wednesday in 2014), while even Rogue One earned 3.5x its $155 million launch in 2016 and Tron: Legacy earned 3.9x its $44 million launch in 2010.

Oh, and its only real competition would be Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story. As nice as it might be to presume that a light will switch and society will return to normal, folks who have suffered undue financial hardship as a result of this quarantine might not have the funds to race out to a first-run movie theater right away, but a December release date would give moviegoers time to readjust. I don’t know for sure what WB will do with the Gal Gadot/Chris Pine sequel, and an early August launch has its value too. However, presuming we’re not in act two of The Stand, a movie like Wonder Woman 1984, could be an absolute monster as the official year-end fantasy action tentpole.