Wonder Woman easily was the box office champ of the weekend, shattering expectations and earning the best audience scores for Warner Brothers’ DC Extended Universe franchise of films. Sunday morning estimates place the debut solo feature film for the iconic superhoerine at just north of $100 million at the domestic box office. That’s a number at the upper end of the most optimistic estimates going into the weekend.
The box office take also marks the film as having the highest opening box office weekend for a female director, propelling helmer Patty Jenkins past Fifty Shades Of Grey director Sam Taylor-Johnson, who held that spot with her film’s $85.1 million debut weekend receipts.
Additionally, Wonder Woman also pulled an additional $122.5 million in overseas ticket sales, giving the film a $223 million worldwide box office total for its first three days.
Granted, Wonder Woman still has the softest domestic opening weekend of any DC Extended Universe film. Man Of Steel, Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice and Suicide Squad all handily passed that $100 million mark their opening weekends. But those other three films flamed out fairly quickly, in part due to poor reviews and, at best, mixed word of mouth. Given the overall positive reception from both critics and audiences, Wonder Woman should have much better longevity at the box office.
Without a doubt, Wonder Woman is the best reviewed entry so far in the DC Comics Extended Universe franchise. As of this posting, it has a 93% on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, placing it 38 points ahead of the next best reviewed entry, 2013’s Man Of Steel. It also ruled on Rotten Tomatoes’ Audience Score, pulling a 93% there as well compared to Man Of Steel‘s next best ranking of 75%.
Wonder Woman also pulled the best audience-generated CinemaScore for the DC Extended universe franchise, landing a solid A, just above Man Of Steel‘s A-. Wonder Woman becomes the first DC Comics hero not named “Batman” to earn an A CinemaScore rating. Previously, Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman and all three entries in Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy earned As.
Long range tracking for Wonder Woman was not as optimistic as this weekend’s reality proved to be. Initial estimates from two months ago for Wonder Woman‘s domestic opening weekend were in the $60 to $80 million range. Some prognosticators put that number down in part to people being cautious about running out to support another of Warners’ DC Comics Extended Universe films after the poor critical and audience response to the franchise’s previous entries. Those estimates began to swing upward two weeks ago following early positive buzz from initial press screenings. Expectations got a further healthy bump when reviewers were allowed to begin publishing their full reviews last weekend.
Looking ahead, the next potential office office rival Wonder Woman could face comes in a few weeks, when Transformers 5 opens on June 21. Even so, the film could go on to be the franchise’s biggest hit to date.
