Wonder Woman, directed by Patty Jenkins, has been making headlines not only because of its
domestic opening over $100 Million, but also because of its astoundingly good performance in subsequent weekends. Rather than the typical superhero drop of 55-70% for the second weekend (because superhero fans often come out in hordes on opening weekend),
Wonder Woman fell only 43%!!! This speaks to positive word-of-mouth and also a general appeal to all ages and to people who don't always come out for superhero movies. Throughout the weekdays,
Wonder Woman was also consistently surpassing previous hit superhero films, and now its
third weekend posted a mere 30% decline. This is incredible staying power on the domestic side, boosted somewhat by
Pirates 5 having an underwhelming run in the U.S. If
Transformers 5 also lightens up a bit in the U.S. compared to previous installments, then
Wonder Woman will run strong through to the arrival of
Spider-Man Homecoming. (
Pirates 5 and
Transformers 5 are bigger hits internationally, and that might be part of why
Wonder Woman is rocking the States even harder than it's rocking the international box office.)
How does
Wonder Woman's incredible box office run thus far compare with other recent superhero origin films? I am a mathematics educator by profession, so I enjoy seeing data visually. Here is a depiction of
Wonder Woman's domestic box office tally compared to the six solo origin films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as well as the other solo origin film in the DCEU (
Man of Steel) and, to give us a sense of the top end, I've also included the runaway hit,
Deadpool from Fox.
NOTE: This graph, with dollars in millions, shows the accumulation for the first 24 days of release, and then I included the final domestic total at the far right.
Notice that, for the opening weekend,
Wonder Woman behaved very much like typical box office contour, tracking right along with
Iron Man. But then right away on its first weekdays, we can see that
Wonder Woman is doing something different than usual -- it slashes upward, bringing in higher rates each day and then for the second and third weekend, allowing it to move from the middle of the pack all the way up to
Deadpool's heels (and
Deadpool also had very strong legs). If
Wonder Woman can keep up its pace for another week or so, we should already see it surpass
Deadpool's domestic total at that point in it's run. I suspect that this will happen by Thursday, June 22nd. From then onward, if it can at least hold as well as
Deadpool did, it will surpass $365 Million in the U.S. for a worldwide total of at least $730 Million. (Shameless self-promotion: back in
February I predicted $725 Million for
Wonder Woman.)
For those of you who enjoy more of the details of Hollywood accounting, join me below the fold.
