One by one, we've seen the movies of 2020 bumped from their release dates in favour of a 2021 release or a streaming debut, but one of the final blockbusters of the year is still holding firm to its Christmas release date…so far. WONDER WOMAN 1984 was once slated to hit theaters on December 13, 2019, before actually being bumped up to November 1, 2019 and then finding itself delayed to June 5, 2020. As we know, COVID-19 came calling and closed theaters across the globe, forcing Warner Bros. to first push the film back to August 14th, then to October 2nd, and finally to December 25th.
Although I would personally say that it's a safe bet that WONDER WOMAN 1984 will be delayed, Warner Bros. CEO Ann Sarnoff told Variety that they're still committed to seeing WONDER WOMAN 1984 in theaters on Christmas Day. That said, Warner Bros. have been watching conditions in the U.S. very closely before making their final call. "It really is about how the U.S. continues to open, and whether there are any other surges," Sarnoff said. "We’ve got a little bit of time to figure that out." Sarnoff also touched upon the release of Christopher Nolan's TENET, which was also delayed several times before landing in the U.S. on September 3rd. Although the film went on to earn $341 worldwide, very little of that total came from its domestic release. Although that total obviously isn't what they would have expected if we weren't in the middle of a pandemic, Sarnoff said they were still very pleased by the results.
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.
The first WONDER WOMAN film grossed $821 million worldwide, which was pretty evenly distributed between domestic and international markets, but with WONDER WOMAN 1984 "expected to skew more to the domestic market than TENET," Warner Bros. might have a hard choice to make in the coming weeks. Earlier this month, director Patty Jenkins said that she wasn't confident that the film would be released on Christmas, but added that she's a big supporter of the theatrical experience. The WONDER WOMAN sequel will bring the action into the 1980s and find Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) facing off against Max Lord (Pedro Pascal) and The Cheetah (Kristen Wiig). Place your bets, folks. Will WONDER WOMAN 1984 hold firm on Christmas or will the film be delayed once again?
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