‘Wonder Woman’ To Whip ‘Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2’ As Summer’s Highest-Grossing Film; 2nd Best Of 2017
by
Anthony D'Alessandro July 18, 2017 2:31pm
Warner Bros.
As we first pointed out
Friday night, Warner Bros./
DC’s
Wonder Woman will fly over Disney/
Marvel’s
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 at the domestic box office this coming weekend with more than $387M. This easily will make
Wonder Woman the highest-grossing title of the domestic summer B.O. and the second best so far this year after Disney’s
Beauty and the Beast ($504M).
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DC beating a Marvel title at the summer box office?
That’s a feat no one saw coming at the start of the season, especially after
Wonder Woman opened to 30% less than
GOTG2‘s bow, $103.2M to $146.5M. Last summer, Disney/Marvel’s
Captain America: Civil War was summer’s top-grossing live-action title with $408M, outstripping both WB/DC’s August release
Suicide Squad ($325M) and Easter/spring title
Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice ($330.4M).
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Wonder Woman counts $381.5M through Monday, about $5.15M behind
GOTG2‘s $386.7M. Among the first chapters for a solo superhero series,
Wonder Woman is the second best on the all-time U.S./Canada B.O. chart after Sony/Marvel’s 2002
Spider-Man ($403.7M). She’s also the third-highest-grossing Warner Bros. release of all time stateside after
The Dark Knight ($534.9M) and
The Dark Knight Rises ($448.1M) –both DC titles — and the pic recently clicked past
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 ($381M).
Warner Bros.
Wonder Woman counts several benchmarks in what has been a sleepy summer with flagging ticket sales overall and
plummeting exhibition stocks. The Patty Jenkins-directed movie notched
the best opening ever for a title by a female director and the
best global haul for a live-action film directed by a woman. In the wake of such low-budget duds as
Fist Fight, CHIPS, The House and
Unforgettable as well as big-budget bombs like
King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, Wonder Woman stands as an oasis at the 2017 box office for WB, easily the studio’s biggest title followed by
The Lego Batman Movie ($175.8M) and
Kong: Skull Island ($168M). Despite the combined $1.6 billion worldwide B.O. success of WB’s DC titles
Suicide Squad and
Batman v. Superman last year, both were met with a lukewarm response from audiences and an even worse slapping by critics.
Wonder Woman suffered neither, with an A CinemaScore and a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 92% Fresh. The A CinemaScore comes with a 3.6 box office multiple off a pic’s opening, and that’s exactly where
Wonder Woman stands right now.
For star Gal Gadot,
Wonder Woman easily is her highest-grossing film at the domestic B.O. It’s her second to cross the $300M threshold after
BvS, with the DC superhero easily blowing smoke in the face of the actress’
Fast and Furious titles:
Fast and Furious ($155M),
Fast Five ($209.8M) and
Fast & Furious 6 ($238.7M).
Wonder Woman‘s stateside climb has been one of soft weekend-to-weekend declines, which have averaged 37% each weekend during its run. By comparison,
GOTG2 logged an average of -42% each weekend in its first six weekends following its opening. Most superhero movies can drop anywhere between 55% to the low 60%-tile in their second go-round, and
Wonder Woman only dipped 43%.
A lot of this box office momentum can be attributed to the strong turnout by female audiences who have been waiting for this classic superhero’s big screen debut. With any four-quad superhero movie, there’s never any concern about guys showing up; it’s typically the females who trail just a tad behind. But in comScore/Screen Engine’s PostTrak audience polls, women outweighed men 55% to 45% when it came to buying tickets to
Wonder Woman, with females ages 25 and up (32%) leading the way, followed by men 25+ (29%) and women under 25 (23%). Forty percent bought tickets because they had been waiting for a
Wonder Woman movie, while 28% bought tickets because they’re Gadot fans.
Speaking of the Israeli actress, she will be at San Diego
Comic-Con on Saturday along with the
Justice League team, breaking more DC news.
If Marvel’s Star Lord gang has any bragging rights over Diana Prince this summer, it’s at the foreign and global tills, where
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 boasts $472.7M abroad and a $859.4M worldwide cume to
Wonder Woman‘s $385.3M foreign take and $766.8M global B.O. Unlike last summer, when
Captain America: Civil War and
Finding Dory easily eclipsed the $1 billion mark worldwide, no summer release has clicked past that mark to date. This leaves
Beauty and the Beast and
Fate of the Furious as the only 2017 titles to gross more than $1 billion.
