No, You Probably Don’t Know How to Make a Successful Wonder Woman Movie

There’s quite a bit of derision aimed at Warner Bros. in the media and among comic book fans, saying essentially, “How can it be so hard to make a Wonder Woman movie? Here’s how I would do it!”More than once now, there’s been short fan films made, accompanied by a flurry of blog posts and stories in the entertainment press centered around the idea that a small group of underfunded fans have figured out something that Warner Bros. can’t.The idea that Warner Bros. can’t “figure out” Wonder Woman comes from comments made by various officials in the company. Mark Pedowitz of The CW, when he benched Amazon recently, said that Diana was “the trickiest of all the DC characters.” Other officials, citing underperforming movies like Salt and Whiteout, have expressed concern about building an action franchise around a female lead; those have been difficult sells in recent years and as the budget for tentpole movies keeps spiraling upwards you have to make more and more money to generate a profit off such a film.

1. Set in World War II (a la her early appearances, The New Frontier and some others)
2. Dealing with mythological roots (George Perez’s run, the New 52 version, the aforementioned animated feature)

Neither of those is either a guaranteed box office hit or something that can be easily translated into a film that would work with Man of Steel. Diana can’t be eighty years old or older and still work as a contemporary of Superman and Batman, for instance, so World War II is a hard sell. Plus, it would be seen as a knock-off of Captain America in some quarters and it would be admittedly difficult to do a very different take on superheroes in World War II so soon after Captain America: The First Avenger.The mythology angle is a real problem for Warner Bros., who recently had disappointments with Clash of the Titans and Wrath of the Titans. It’s been a long while since anything this side of 300 has been a big hit in that style of filmmaking and it seems pretty likely that 300: Rise of an Empire might not qualify.So…what next? Do you just expect that making a standard superhero movie will work because of Wonder Woman’s familiar brand and the fact that she’s a woman? It could work, certainly, or somebody could come up with a wholly unexpected take on the concept……but don’t pretend that because somebody can make a two-minute fan video that looks great and draws 3 million hits, that means Warner is half-assing the approach to the movie; they need a lot more than 3 million people to watch a TV show or movie to be even remotely successful.