Warner Bros. has a lot riding on Wonder Woman, hoping that it’ll break the DC Extended Universe’s streak of critical disasters and herald financial viability for female-fronted superhero movies. Unfortunately for them, however, it won’t be all smooth sailing. Box Office Pro have now run the numbers and made a very long-range projection on how it’ll do: $83M domestic on its opening weekend with a final domestic total of $225M. In other words, a seriously worrying decrease when compared to previous DCEU opening weekends.
Predicting the box office business of a film that’s still two months away is a murky art, but here’s their reasoning. On the plus side, the site argues that Wonder Woman‘s main draw is that’ll be the first ever major female superhero movie (someone’s forgetting Catwoman and Elektra), which will no doubt drive media and public interest in it. Plus, everyone knows the character in one form or another, driving audiences who might not be familiar with the nuances of the DCEU (not that audience unfamiliarity stopped Guardians of the Galaxy, mind you).
They also point out that it’s got a full month between both Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and Spider-Man: Homecoming to rake in the dough, preventing it from being swallowed up by the MCU sharks. Also, while Batman V Superman isn’t exactly thought of highly, Wonder Woman was widely considered to be one of the very best parts of the film and her appearance seemed to please most.
That’s where the positives end, though, as Box Office Pro notes that the DCEU’s critical negativity is bound to catch up with the movie at some point, with some people having already written it off as a pale imitation of the much-loved MCU. Also, there’s not quite the Twitter buzz there was about previous DC films, with ‘Facebook fan growth’ a shadow of what Suicide Squad had at this stage.
Finally, its opening weekend is in between the new Pirates of the Caribbean and The Mummy, which isn’t too fierce when it comes to competition, but makes a good critical reception and decent word of mouth absolutely crucial for Wonder Woman. Of course, this report from Box Office Pro isn’t the kiss of doom, but I doubt there’s a fingernail going un-chewed at Warner Bros. right now.
Wonder Woman flopping would be a major setback for the DCEU, meaning that Justice League would absolutely have to succeed or it’s back to the drawing board for DC’s cinematic ambitions. Either way, we’ll know soon enough, as Patty Jenkins’ film opens on June 2nd. Fingers crossed, eh?