Another day, another Wonder Woman box office post! As long as you keep reading them, I'll keep writing them. Wonder Woman ended its fourth weekend with $318.111 million after 24 days of domestic play and earned $3m yesterday, a drop of just 36% from last Monday, for a $321.186m domestic cume. That means it passed the unadjusted domestic gross of Iron Man ($318.5m in 2008 and sans 3D) yesterday, will top Suicide Squad ($325m) today and is days away from passing Batman v Superman ($330m). Oh, it should pass the $665m worldwide cume of Jennifer Yuh Nelson's (still awesome) Kung Fu Panda 2 either today or over the next day or two to become the biggest global grosser ever from a solo female filmmaker.
Now for the record, as much grief as we've given the DC Films franchise over the last year or so, I think it stands to reason that any cinematic universe where the lowest-grossing installment (out of four thus far) sits at $291 million domestic/$668m worldwide (Man of Steel) is doing pretty well. So, as the headline asks, can Wonder Woman make it to $400m domestic by the time it finishes? Well, as befitting most long-term questions with a yes or no answer, the answer is "maybe."
There was a time not long ago when I was merely hoping that the $150 million production would make at least $85m on opening weekend (on par with Logan, Thor: The Dark World and Doctor Strange) and leg it to $225m-$235m domestic with enough overseas muscle to put it squarely in the black. And after opening weekend, I was hopeful that it might have the legs of a popular Marvel Cinematic Universe movie and make it to $265-$275m by the end. Well, it is day 26 of the film's domestic release, and it has shown remarkable staying power.
I've continuously had to move the goal posts in terms of realistic expectations and logical precedents. So, four weeks out and with some real rivals about to (finally) drop, what's the outlook for the Gal Gadot superhero origin story?As of today, the film has earned $320m, giving it an obscene 3.1x weekend-to-final multiplier. Credit the buzz, the underwhelming blockbuster competition and the sheer power of the film's "school's out" weekday business. But now that A) we're about to face a run of confirmed and/or allegedly good "big" summer movies and B) the film will have to start losing screens eventually unless it holds out while The Mummy, Transformers: The Last Knight and Cars 3 takes the hit instead.
So, let's take a glance at where the film might end up in North America once it wraps up its jaw-dropping run. And, right off the bat, we have to remove nearly every recent "opened on a Friday" comic book superhero movie save for Guardians of the Galaxy ($333 million from a $94m debut weekend) and Spider-Man ($403m from a $114m debut weekend), as Wonder Woman is proving leggier than all of them. When it tops $326m, it will not only best the domestic gross of Suicide Squad but also the multiplier for Ant-Man ($181m/$57m). That means it will be leggier than every MCU movie save Guardians.
Once it tops $367 million, it will be leggier than every "opened on a Friday" MCU and Marvel-related movie since Blade as well as every big "opened on a Friday" DC movie since Tim Burton's Batman. And at this juncture, looking at the realistic comparisons, $367m should be a cake walk. The "worst case scenario" is arguable a run like Finding Dory, which earned $423m at the end of its fourth weekend and ended its run with $486m. A similar trajectory would give Wonder Woman "just" $365m domestic. But if it plays like Toy Story 3 from this point ($339m by day 24/$415m domestic total), the Gal Gadot vehicle gets to $389m.
A run like The Secret Life of Pets gets it to $394 million and a run like Shrek 2 gets it to $394m. But if it continues to play at least as well from this point, in terms of legs, as The Jungle Book, it gets to $405m and just past Spider-Man's $403m domestic total (from back in 2002). A run like Maleficent, which also scored big as the female-centric summer blockbuster of the season launching on the same weekend back in 2014, would push Wonder Woman to $412m domestic. Finally, if it plays like Guardians of the Galaxy from here on out, unlikely as that film had the whole "last super-duper release of the summer" factor through August and September, we're looking at a $422m domestic cume or just over/under the $423m finish of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.
This is obviously just fun with math, but you'll note that the projections have consistently shot upward as the film played on over the last four weeks. It could lose a bunch of screens really quickly thanks to The House, Despicable Me 3 and Baby Driver or it could get walloped by Spider-Man: Homecoming and War for the Planet of the Apes. Moreover, Warner Bros./Time Warner Inc. is going to have to shift gears to focus on Chris Nolan's Dunkirk relatively soon. But, as I said, I keep having to shift my projections upward so at this point I wouldn't bet against it A) passing Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 to be the domestic champion of the summer and B) ending up just over that magical $400m mark. To be continued...
