We're approaching the end of Wonder Woman's domestic theatrical run, but the film remains in the weekly top-10 after ten weeks in release and continues to enjoy declines in the 25-35% range. Worldwide, Wonder Woman has already topped $790 million and still has several million more dollars to go in its existing territories. And Japan looms on the horizon to send it over the $800 million mark sometime around the last week of August, if Gal Gadot's Amazon princess-warrior doesn't power to that number anyway over the next three weeks in current markets. But before it tops that magic number globally, Wonder Woman is about to reach a major milestone in North America sometime in the next 100 hours or so.
Patty Jenkins gave us the highest-grossing entry in the DCU to date at the domestic box office, already passing the domestic totals of Man of Steel, Batman v Superman, and Suicide Squad. And Jenkins' film is the second-highest grossing movie worldwide in the DCU, behind only Batman v Superman's $873 million global cume. That's already an impressive enough feat and makes Wonder Woman instantly the most popular DCU character with mainstream audiences.
This weekend, however, will see Wonder Woman climb to $399+/- million stateside, with probably less than $1 million to go before topping the $400 million mark. Depending on how strong its weekend receipts hold, it will hit $400 million sometime on Monday or Tuesday next week.
That number isn't an arbitrary figure for praise. It means Wonder Woman will pass Sam Raimi's 2002 Spider-Man for the #7 spot on the all-time list of superhero domestic grosses, and a strong enough continued hold stateside could help it challenge Iron Man 3 for the #5 spot on the list. Meaning the only films with bigger domestic totals will be films starring either Batman or Iron Man -- essentially three Avengers-type movies (Avengers, Avengers: Age of Ultron, and Captain America: Civil War), two Christopher Nolan Batman movies (The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises), and one Iron Man sequel that road the coattails of the first Avengers movie (Iron Man 3).
To reach such lofty heights in her very first solo cinematic adaptation makes Wonder Woman one of the elite franchises right out the gate. Indeed, Wonder Woman will be the only non-sequel solo superhero outing to crack the top-5 list, should she push Iron Man 3 from that position, and will regardless be the highest-ranked and highest-grossing non-sequel solo superhero film. Wonder Woman will also be tied for status as the second-highest Rotten Tomatoes score among the top-7 to top-5 (wherever it finishes its run) domestic-grossing superhero movies of all time, with a 92% Tomatometer score that matches The Avengers and is behind only The Dark Knight.
Wonder Woman enters the weekend with approximately $792 million in worldwide receipts, including about $397 million from North America. There's a decent chance it could actually hit $400 million by close of business Sunday, but I'm betting on a weekend cume somewhere around $2.2-2.4 million, leaving it perhaps $500,000 shy of $400 million. With such a thin margin, it should add roughly $290+/- thousand on Monday and another $300-350+/- thousand on Tuesday, pushing it to $400 million sometime during screenings Tuesday evening.
After taking $1 million from international theaters last weekend, Wonder Woman is winding down in those markets and will probably add another $1.5-2+/- million in foreign receipts in the next couple of weeks, on top of about $6+/- million or so domestically, depending on how declining theater counts and the arrival of The Dark Tower and Annabelle: Creation over the next few weeks cuts into Wonder Woman's weekly holds. To date, though, expectations for loss of theaters and new challengers to bump those drops higher have been mistaken and Wonder Woman has held strong week after week, so don't be remotely surprised if the film exceeds even these reasonable and positive projections.
I think we'll see it ring the $800 million bell right before it opens in Japan, maybe sometime just after or during the third weekend of August. If Japan adds $10-15 million, and if it pulls another million or so from the rest of the world before vanishing from other markets, then we should see a final cume somewhere around about $815-820 million, challenging 2002's Spider-Man as the tenth-highest grossing superhero movie in worldwide history. The #9 spot on that list goes to this year's Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, and I don't think Japan has much chance of offering up numbers that can push Wonder Woman high enough to steal that spot from the Guardians.
A sequel to Wonder Woman has already been slated for December 13, 2019. Patty Jenkins has stated her intention to return as director on the project, explaining she already has specific ideas for a sequel, and she's currently in negotiations with Warner Bros. to helm the sequel. DC Entertainment President and Chief Creative Officer Geoff Johns meanwhile has already begun writing Wonder Woman II. The film will enter production next year.
But fans won't have to wait until 2019 to get more of Gal Gadot's superheroics, as Wonder Woman will return to the big screen in Justice League, hitting theaters just 15 weeks from now. Gadot is also expected to reprise her role as Wonder Woman in the upcoming production of Flashpoint, which will be Flash's solo movie but is also more of another superhero team-up featuring several additional DC superheroes. Flashpoint is currently scheduled to release in 2020. So we'll see Wonder Woman twice this year, again in 2019, and in 2020. That's an average of one appearance every year, and it means Wonder Woman could potentially appear in as many different films as Batman will over the course of the next few years in the DCEU.
Box office figures and tallies based on data via Box Office Mojo, Rentrak, and TheNumbers.
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