Wonder Woman franchise filmmaker Patty Jenkins says she’ll follow Wonder Woman 1984 with a third movie under the right circumstances — like studio Warner Bros. guaranteeing Wonder Woman 3 a theatrical release model. Weeks after Warner Bros. announced WW84 would release in theaters and on HBO Max on Christmas, AT&T-owned WarnerMedia moved the entire Warner Bros. 2021 slate — a total of 17 movies, including DC Films’ The Suicide Squad — to a hybrid model. Under this unilateral decision that drew criticism from directors Denis Villeneuve (Dune) and Christopher Nolan (Tenet), WarnerMedia will premiere some of its biggest movies on the streaming service on the same day they open in theaters.
Videos by ComicBook.com
“We’ll see what happens. I really don’t know,” Jenkins told The New York Times when asked if a third Wonder Woman might follow Rogue Squadron, her Star Wars feature film just announced at Disney-owned Lucasfilm. “I know that I’d love to do the third one if the circumstances were right and there was still a theatrical model possible. I don’t know that I would if there wasn’t.”
WarnerMedia executives refer to its hybrid model as a one-year plan because of sustained theater closures amid the COVID-19 pandemic. But Jenkins, who delivered a blockbuster hit when Wonder Woman lassoed a global box office of $822 million in 2017, doubts the HBO Max model is only a temporary measure.
“I would like to believe that it is temporary, but I’m not sure I do. But I’ll tell you, some studio’s going to go back to the traditional model and cause tremendous upheaval in the industry, because every great filmmaker is going to go work there,” Jenkins said. “And the studios that make this radical change [of moving their theatrical releases to a streaming service], particularly without consulting the artists, will end up with a very empty slate of quality filmmakers working there.”
Last week, WW84 star and producer Gal Gadot said the day-and-date model emerged as the best option for the DC Comics superhero movie now on its sixth (and final) release date.
“Look, if you would have told me a year ago that that’s gonna be the case, I would flip out and be super angry. But the truth of the matter is we just didn’t have other better options,” Gadot told Digital Spy. “We felt like we were sitting on this movie for such a long time, we shot the movie in 2018, we started promoting the movie in 2019, we pushed the movie four times. We felt like the movie was so relevant to what’s happening in the world right now that you come to a place at a certain time where you’re like, ‘OK, I just want people to watch the movie.’”
Starring Gal Gadot, Kristen Wiig, Pedro Pascal, and Chris Pine, Wonder Woman 1984 opens in theaters and releases on HBO Max for a limited time on Christmas Day.
