As more cinema halls shut down the world over, due to the continuing threat of infection in public places, most major Hollywood releases have been postponed by several months to a full year. Warner Bros. CEO Ann Sarfnoff recently spoke during a Q&A as part of Variety’s Power of Women Conversations virtual event, where she reaffirmed the studio’s commitment to releasing Wonder Woman 1984 in December this year.
“According to Sarnoff, Warner Bros. is committed to seeing its next tentpole, Wonder Woman 1984, land in theaters on Christmas Day. But the studio will have to watch conditions in the U.S. closely before making the final call because Wonder Woman is expected to skew more to the domestic market than Tenet}.
This is not the first time Warner has taken a gamble on a theatrical release for a big-budget movie in the middle of 2020. Christopher Nolan’s Tenet was also released in theaters the world over earlier this year by the studio. While Tenet underperformed in the US, it showed fairly healthy numbers at the international box office, a development that Sarnoff noted she is “very pleased” with.
“Christopher has [a] huge following, of course in the U.S., but his other movies have always over-indexed overseas,. And if you remember back in June, July, August, the international markets were more open than the United States, so we had this amazing movie that really deserved to be on the big screen… So here we are – we’re getting close to $350 million in box office which is really good in a pandemic and over $50 million in the U.S.”
While Sarnoff appears happy with Tenet’s performance in movie theaters, the truth is the movie did not do anywhere near the numbers that were being predicted by industry analysts in the weeks preceding its release. Now, the hopes that were pinned on Tenet have shifted to Wonder Woman 1984, hence Warner’s caution when it comes to announcing a definite release date for the movie.
Directed and co-written by Patty Jenkins, Wonder Woman 1984 features Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Kristen Wiig, Pedro Pascal, and Natasha Rothwell. The movie picks up the story of Prince Diana of Themyscira decades after her entry into Man’s World in the original Wonder Woman.
Set in 1984, the upcoming film sees Diana reunited with her long-lost love Steve Trevor while battling the combined threat of Maxwell Lord and The Cheetah. While the plot of the film has been kept under wraps so far, various hints gathered from promotional materials for the movie have led fans to surmise that Lord comes into possession of a mystical artifact that grants people their dearest wish.
With the help of the artifact, Diana’s friend Barbara turns into her arch-enemy Cheetah, while Diana’s wish is fulfilled by Steven returning from the dead. It remains to be seen how audiences like the superheroine’s latest adventure when they eventually get to watch the movie. Wonder Woman 1984 arrives in theaters on December 25. This news arrives from Variety.