One of the biggest movies of 2020 is almost here. After several months of pandemic related delay, Wonder Woman 1984 will arrive on Christmas Day in North America. However, the film begins rolling out in international theaters today, and as the HBO Max streaming service hasn't rolled out around the world quite yet, theaters are the only option in many places for seeing the film. While that might mean that the Wonder Woman sequel could bring people out to the theaters, current estimates are that the film's international opening will be somewhere in the neighborhood of $60 million.
Wonder Woman 1984 opens in the U.K. Portugal, and Indonesia today, and will be opening in a total of 32 countries between now and Friday. Combined, Deadline is estimating an opening to be something around $60 million or slightly more. That's compared to the previous film in the franchise doing about $73 million in similar markets for the same time period.
Obviously, a large part of the estimated decline is covid-related. Theaters in London aren't even open right now as the city is going into another significant lockdown period. Between theaters not being open, not being open to full capacity, or audiences simply not being quite willing to visit theaters right now, that probably covers all the reasons that Wonder Woman 1984 isn't going to open quite as strongly as the first movie. The reviews of Wonder Woman 1984 have been solid and audience interest seems to be on par with the first film.
One place where Wonder Woman 1984 might actually do better than the first movie is China. Wonder Woman did about $38 million when it opened there, and the sequel is tracking to do $40 million or more. Having said that, Wonder Woman may still open in the number two spot in the Chinese box office, as domestic action movie The Rescue is currently doing better than the Amazonian in ticket pre-sales.
It will be interesting to see how Wonder Woman 1984 ends up doing domestically. The film will see a day and date release on the HBO Max streaming service and that decision will almost certainly cost the movie some ticket sales, though it may end up in even more people actually seeing the movie than otherwise would, and the money that Warner Bros. doesn't see at the box office will likely come through HBO Max subscriptions.
Ultimately, 2020, and probably 2021, will largely be written off at the box office. What's unclear is how significantly the changes the industry has seen will continue past the current period. And considering that Patty Jenkins is currently busy with a star war, and has said that Wonder Woman 3 is in no rush to go into production, it could be some time before we see Wonder Woman on the big screen again.
