Director Patty Jenkins first expressed interest in making a Wonder Woman movie over 10 years ago. She’d just made Monster, which won Charlize Theron an Oscar, and was doing the rounds at various studios talking about what she’d like to do next. Richard Donner’s Superman was a film that changed her life, and it occurred to her that there still hadn’t been a Wonder Woman movie.
Wonder Woman, Jenkins remembers saying. “Let me make Wonder Woman.”
It happened, though not without a few detours along the way, including a pregnancy, Jenkins almost directing the sequel to Thor, and another director initially getting the Wonder Woman job.
Now Jenkins’ Wonder Woman is barreling toward its big release on June 2. And unfairly or not, there’s a lot at stake. Not only is it the first-ever big screen movie about one of the most popular superheroes of all time, it’s also the first female-led superhero movie in over a decade, following the financial disasters of Catwoman and Elektra. On top of all that, it’s a rare big budget blockbuster from a director who happens to be a woman. No pressure, right?
The story of Wonder Woman is a dozen stories tied into one film. It’s the story one director who loved Superman getting to realize her lifelong dream of directing a classical superhero origin story. It’s the story of an industry taking another long-delayed gamble on a female-led film in a historically male-dominated genre. And it’s the continuing story of female directors fighting for a place at the blockbuster table.
This summer there are a number of female-directed films coming out, but most are independent, few are wide-releases and all are one-offs. Among them are Stella Meghie’s teen drama Everything, Everything (May 19); Lucia Aniello’s bachelorette comedy Rough Night (June 16); Sofia Coppola’s Civil War pic The Beguiled (June 23); and Kathryn Bigelow’s 1967 riots drama Detroit (Aug. 4). Jenkins has the sole tent-pole, an industry term for a big budget movie intended to support a studio’s lower-earning films.
In fact, Jenkins is one of the few women who have ever been granted a budget of over $100 million. Bigelow got one for K-19: The Widowmaker, and Ava DuVernay has one for A Wrinkle in Time. It’s not unreasonable to assume that Mulan’s Niki Caro and Captain Marvel co-director Anna Boden will get that too. But it’s a void that’s especially notable during the summer, when there are a seemingly endless string of male-directed films with $200 million-plus budgets in theaters each week.
It’s not that women don’t direct summer blockbusters. In the past ten years of top studio summer releases there’s been Elizabeth Banks’ Pitch Perfect 2, Phyllida Lloyd’s Mamma Mia and Anne Fletcher’s The Proposal, all of which grossed from $287.5 million to $609.8 million on budgets under $52 million. They’re just often not afforded blockbuster budgets.
“When the money is there, there are fewer women,” said Melissa Silverstein, publisher and founder of the website Women and Hollywood.