Great Hera! The box office predictions are in and it appears that Warner Brothers’ ‘Wonder Woman’, directed by Patty Jenkins and starring Gal Gadot and Chris Pine is looking to open to the tune of $83 million. That’s a boatload of money for most. ‘WW’s budget was just $100M. (If your checked this weekend’s numbers, the highest grossing movie was ‘The Boss Baby’ which only made $26 million.) Buuuuuuuut… it falls well short of the opening weekend grosses for previous WB DC Comics movies. Last year’s ‘Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice’ hit a high note, opening to $166M. The follow-up, ‘Suicide Squad’ debuted to $133M. Going back further, ‘Man of Steel’ even opened at $116M. All of these numbers vastly outshine what ‘Wonder Woman’ is predicted to make on its first weekend.
These predictions come from Pro Box Office, which predicts that next week’s ‘The Fate of the Furious’ will open to $118M. As far as fellow superhero movies, ‘Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2’ is expected to make $160M and ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’— which will be the first Spidey movie set within the Marvel Cinematic Universe– will open to an astounding $160M. Sadly, the forecast for ‘Wonder Woman’ just barely outpaces those for Disney’s desperate ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales’, which is looking to open at $75… and really who wants to see THAT?!
Keep in mind, these are predictions and movies blow past those all the time. It’s really not clear why ‘Wonder Woman’ is tracking so low. It’s already indexing higher than ‘Suicide Squad’ was at this point before its release last year on Twitter, but significantly lower on Facebook. It is opening between ‘Pirates’ and ‘The Mummy’ (once again, not much buzz on that one). And it’s opening on a non-holiday weekend. A portion of what may hurt ‘Wonder Woman’ is the bad reception that ‘Batman V Superman’ and ‘Suicide Squad’ received, but then again, Gadot’s portrayal as Wonder Woman in ‘BvS’ was a lot of people’s favorite part of that movie. (Myself included.) There’s also, the fact that, sadly, Wonder Woman is an icky girl and icky girls haven’t proven themselves to be strong action movie stars.
Critical reception will play a big part but possibly an even stronger impact will be made when average fans get to see it and spread the word (positive or negative) on social media. As much as ‘BvS’ is perceived to be a disaster, fans turned out in droves to make up their minds for themselves. Unfortunately, in that case, most of them made up their minds that it sucked, which brings us back to the idea that the prior DC movies haven’t been well received, which could hurt ‘Wonder Woman’.
Will you be checking out ‘Wonder Woman’ on opening weekend? Or were you waiting to see how others reacted?
‘Wonder Woman’ opens on June 2, 2017.
Source: Pro Box Office
