Gal Gadot in Patty Jenkins' 'Wonder Woman 1984'
No, I don’t know if the new release date for Wonder Woman 1984 will stick any harder than the last five did. It’s entirely possible/likely that Denis Villeneuve’s ambitious sci-fi spectacular will be moved from December 18 to summer 2021. After all, WB’s delays of The Matrix 4 (to April 2, 2022) and The Batman (to October 4, 2021) leaves a big gap in their summer slate. If Dune departs, it’s almost certain that Wonder Woman 1984 will jump back a week, landing in the same pre-Christmas slot that has served Time Warner so well (the Lord of the Rings trilogy, I Am Legend, the Hobbit trilogy, Aquaman) over the last 20 years. But if Patty Jenkins’ Gal Gadot/Chris Pine sequel actually opens on December 25, 2020, it’ll almost be set to make box office history.
Yes, we got word yesterday that Warner Bros. was delaying Wonder Woman 1984 from October 2 to December 25. Whether it’s about giving WB’s pricey Tenet time to build up an audience (while waiting for theaters in California and New York to reopen) or about implicitly acknowledging that Tenet’s $20.2 million Thurs-Mon domestic debut (with around $10 million over the Fri-Sun portion) wasn’t going to cut it, the end result is the same. With Universal sending Candyman from October 16 to a to-be-determined date in 2021, the very theaters that rushed to reopen in anticipation of Tenet and Mulan have watched as Mulan went to PVOD in America and much of the world while Tenet has under-performed domestically. With no new tentpoles between now and maybe Black Widow in November, well, that’s not going to “save” the movie theaters.
The new release date for Wonder Woman 1984 is just a week after the December 18 debut of Legendary and WB’s Dune. Dune was scheduled for the prime pre-Christmas slot well over a year ago, and it was a shrewd move to position the sprawling but commercially questionable fantasy as the year’s court-appointed year-end holiday season event movie. It is absolutely positioning itself, presuming it stays, as this year’s equivalent of The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars and Avatar. That puts Wonder Woman 1984 in a strange position, as the DC Films sequel is almost certain to out-gross the comparatively cult sci-fi biggie. Even if you argue that Dune skews overseas while Wonder Woman 1984 (a sequel to a film that earned $412.5 million out of $821 million in North America) skews domestic, it’s still an odd pairing.
Nonetheless, it is theoretically possible that both films could thrive in an otherwise bountiful holiday box office frame, especially as the only biggies in town. In August of 2018, Warner Bros.’ Crazy Rich Asians earned $171 million domestic while Warner Bros.’ The Meg earned $145 million domestic (and $530 million worldwide). Both films thrived while Paramount’s Mission: Impossible – Fallout earned $220 million domestic and $792 million worldwide. That October/November, WB’s A Star Is Born ($424 million global), Sony’s Venom ($854 million), Universal’s Halloween ($256 million) and Fox’s Bohemian Rhapsody ($905 million) all earned best-case scenario box office despite opening almost consecutively. So yes, pandemic challenges notwithstanding, WB’s grim, adult-skewing sci-fi fantasy and WB’s more colorful and family-friendly superhero adventure could absolutely thrive concurrently just as any number of Pixar and Illumination movies have soared alongside each other.
If Wonder Woman 1984 stays at Christmas, whether or not Dune flees, it’ll almost certainly be the biggest Christmas release, sans inflation, of all time. In terms of movies that opened on Christmas Day, the current single-day gross record holder is Sherlock Holmes, which earned $24.6 million on opening day (alongside the $23 million eighth-day gross of Avatar). Presuming theaters are open in anything resembling a normal fashion, it’s pretty safe to argue that Wonder Woman 1984, a sequel to a film that scored $38 million on its opening Friday, will have little problem nabbing an opening day above $25 million. Anything above $27.5 million (the eleventh day of Star Wars: The Last Jedi) will put it behind only the $49.5 million day-eight gross of Star Wars: The Force Awakens among all Christmas daily grosses.
Among all movies released on Christmas Day, the biggest such grosser is Sherlock Holmes ($206 million domestic and $525 million worldwide) in 2009. There are plenty of big hits that opened on Christmas Day or right before Christmas Day (Sing, Les Misérables, National Treasure: Book of Secrets, etc.), but the big holiday event movie tends to open the week before Christmas week while the other films jump in right before the actual holiday. Just as Thanksgiving weekend is usually dominated by the big YA fantasy flick that opened the week before (Harry Potter, Twilight, Hunger Games, Frozen II, etc.), so too was the Christmas weekend usually dominated by whatever fantasy biggie (Avatar, Return of the King, Rogue One, Aquaman, etc.) opened just beforehand. The biggest “opened on or around Christmas” grosser remains Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle in 2017.
That film’s stunning $404 million domestic/$962 million global benchmark, as The Last Jedi was earning $1.333 billion and The Greatest Showman was legging to $434 million, may be a bridge too far. Wonder Woman earned $412.5 million domestic and $821 million worldwide. While audiences clearly liked it (it remains the leggiest “opened on a Friday” $100 million-plus opener ever), it’s no guarantee that A) the sequel will match that figure in North America or B) that the film’s overseas grosses will go up to an extent to pass its predecessor and the $962 million cume of the Dwayne Johnson/Kevin Hart Jumanji movie. The other biggest-grossing Christmas flicks (Meet the Fockers, Night at the Museum, National Treasure: Book of Secrets, Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel, Sherlock Homes, Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol and Sing) earned $204 million-$279 million domestic and $522 million-$692 million worldwide.
That would be, in conventional circumstances, an easy bar for the much-anticipated Wonder Woman 1984 to clear even if it’s not as good (or as beloved) as its predecessor. Presuming the Gal Gadot/Chris Pine flick stays on Christmas Day and is able to have something approximating a normal theatrical release, it should easily set a record for a Christmas Day opener (above the opening day of Sherlock Holmes) and come within spitting distance of the biggest Christmas single-day gross (over/under The Force Awakens’ second-Friday gross). And if it plays as otherwise expected, it’ll easily be the second-biggest-grossing movie to open “around” Christmas save for only/maybe Jumanji: The Next Level. But that’s assuming it doesn’t get a seventh release date. Let’s hope that the sixth release date is the charm for what should have been this year’s biggest domestic earner.
