With 2020 coming to a close, Warner. Bros had officially started their plan of releasing their 2021 slate of movies in theaters and on HBO Max at the same time. The first film to be released under this plan was Wonder Woman 1984, which came out on Christmas day. With it being several weeks since the film’s release, just how well did the film perform both in theaters, and on HBO Max?
In its opening weekend, Wonder Woman 1984 made $16.7 million in North America, which would be terrible if there wasn’t a pandemic going on right now. In fact, this is currently the biggest box office opening during this pandemic. Despite this strong opening, WW84 dropped 67% in its second weekend, only grossing $5.5 million.
This significant drop can be for a variety of reasons. It may be due to the film’s mixed reception, considering that WW84 has a 60% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes and 5.5/10 on IMDb. It may be due to the risk of getting COVID, as this film was released during a time where everyone was travelling to visit their families. The availability on HBO Max may have taken up what could have been more ticket sales than expected. At this point, there is no clear answer as to why there was such a major drop.
Internationally, Wonder Woman 1984 made $38.5 million in its opening weekend, which was a week before its release in the US. The film made only $18.8 million in China, which is only half of the $37 million opening weekend that the first Wonder Woman made in China. This is particularly bad because China’s box office has shown signs of getting back to normal in the last few months.
WarnerMedia declared that nearly half of HBO Max’s subscribers watched the film the day it was released, but no subscriber data was shown to the public. According to market measurement website ANTENNA, HBO Max gained more new subscribers in the first three days of WW84 being available than any other streaming service in that same period of time over the past year. The amount of people that this data implies is unknown.
ANTENNA’s data also claims that Wonder Woman 1984 along with Disney+’s Hamilton are the most successful streaming releases of the year. This is based on the number of new subscriptions each streaming service gained during the opening weekends of these films. The data more specifically states that Wonder Woman 1984 drove 40% more gross to HBO Max than Hamilton did for Disney+.
Currently, Wonder Woman 1984 has made over $118 million in its theatrical run. While its initial release did appear to be quite successful, it seems that the film has a large decline each week at the box office. The initial release on HBO Max appeared to be a success according to WarnerMedia, but no concrete numbers have been given to confirm that. Until the film has finished its run in theaters, it’s hard to say whether WW84 is a success or not. From the looks of it, it seems that the film will continue to decline in ticket sales as the weeks go on.
Sources:
https://observer.com/2021/01/wonder-woman-1984-hbo-max-box-office-disney-plus-soul-subscribers/
https://www.vulture.com/2020/12/wonder-woman-1984-highest-box-office-opening-of-pandemic
https://www.businessinsider.com/wonder-woman-1984-flops-china-box-office-piracy-could-surge-2020-1
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/wonder_woman_1984
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7126948/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0
https://screenrant.com/wonder-woman-1984-poor-box-office-performance/
