Wonder Woman is the first solo female superhero film in over a decade, and the first superhero movie period directed by a woman, Patty Jenkins to open this weekend with an estimated $100.5 million at the domestic box office.
According to Buzzfeed.com, Jenkins now officially holds the record for the best domestic box office debut for a female director, surpassing the $85.2 million earned by the opening weekend of Sam Taylor-Wood’s Fifty Shades of Grey in 2015.
Add in $122.5 million in international grosses, and Wonder Woman has already earned more in one weekend than any other female superhero movie has made in its entire theatrical run. In short, it’s crashed through one of Hollywood’s hardest and highest glass ceilings.
Critical reviews have clearly shown that the movie is living up to its hype with multiple reports of audiences breaking into applauses multiple times. The film has been given an ‘A’ for a cinemascore grade, suggesting a long and healthy theatrical life, with fans already tweeting about seeing the movie multiple times.
Predating the Wonder Woman movie, was the absence of a successful female superhero movie, even though characters like Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow and Jennifer Lawrence’s Mystique had experienced relative successes in their respective ensemble superhero films.
However, Hollywood still lacked the faith that a woman could successfully headline her own superhero movie on the belief that men wouldn’t go see it because it was a woman in the lead, and women wouldn’t go because it was a superhero movie.
Now, Wonder Woman has blown our minds and we are thankful for it has paved the way for other superheroines to hit the box office with potential successes.
Atomic Blonde will be showing in July with Charlize Theron as the main star, Cara Delevingne doing the same in Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. Ridley will presumably also kick ass again in December’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi. And in 2018, along with Ant-Man and the Wasp, Alicia Vikander will play Lara Croft in Warner Bros.’ Tomb Raider reboot, and Rosa Salazar (Parenthood, Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials) will headline Alita: Battle Angel, written by James Cameron and Laeta Kalogridis and directed by Robert Rodriguez.
