Apparently Warner Bros. was majorly caught off-guard by the phenomenal box office and critical success of Wonder Woman, so much so that early reports saying star Gal Gadot and director Patty Jenkins were already contracted for the sequel may not be true. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Wonder Woman 2 was indeed folded into Gadot’s overall DC Extended Universe deal, but Jenkins was only signed for one movie. Now that the film is a smash, Jenkins may shortly do a victory lap by negotiating for a healthy deal on not only directing a second film, but also writing the treatment for Part 2 with Geoff Johns, as well as penning other potential DCEU movies.
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This sounds similar to the deal Joss Whedon signed with Marvel after the success of 2012’s The Avengers, where he took on not only Avengers: Age of Ultron but also got paid handsomely to help punch up the other Phase 2 movies like Thor: The Dark World.
The DCEU was already scrambling to fill the empty release slot left by The Batman‘s abandoned late-2018 release date, and had accelerated development on Joss Whedon’s Batgirl and Justice League Dark, the latter of which is still searching for a director (IT‘s Andy Muschietti and Wild Tales‘ Damián Szifron are rumored for the short list). Suicide Squad 2 and Gotham City Sirens are also in active development, with The Flash solo movie in limbo as it searches for yet another director (Robert Zemeckis is in contention). It would not be hard to imagine Warners fast-tracking Wonder Woman 2 in light of the incredible box office of Part 1.
Speaking of, the first film continued to dominate by pulling in $11.8 million on Monday and then gaining 22% on Tuesday to pull in $14.4 million, for a domestic total of $129.4 million. Despite competition from Universal’s Tom Cruise starrer The Mummy, Wonder Woman is expected to handily take the top spot at the box office again this coming weekend.
Wonder Woman was produced by Charles Roven, Zack Snyder and Deborah Snyder, with Richard Suckle, Stephen Jones, Wesley Coller, Geoff Johns and Rebecca Roven serving as executive producers. The film stars Gal Gadot (The Fast and the Furious films, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice), Chris Pine (Star Trek), Robin Wright (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Netflix‘s House of Cards), Danny Huston (Clash of the Titans, X-Men Origins: Wolverine), Ewen Bremner (Exodus: Gods and Kings, Snowpiercer), Saïd Taghmaoui (American Hustle), Elena Anaya (The Skin I Live In), Connie Nielsen (Gladiator, Nymphomaniac: Vol. I) and Lucy Davis (Shaun of the Dead).
