If you didn’t find time to watch Wonder Woman 1984 at HBO Max – and you still want to see what all the fuss is about – it’s just a few more days to go.
Wonder Woman 1984 will leave HBO Max on Sunday, January 24th. This has always been part of the plan. The film will be shown for several weeks exclusively in cinemas before returning to digital avenues, WarnerMedia confirmed to The Verge in November. Wonder Woman 1984 it will then go through the traditional window system (becoming available for purchase at digital retailers like iTunes and Amazon) before returning to HBO Max. In parts of the United States where cinemas are open, this leaves people with a less than perfect option to watch the film, but an option nonetheless. In parts of the country where cinemas are closed, such as New York and Los Angeles, this leaves people with no legal options.
The film grossed only $ 35.8 million domestically – less than Christopher Nolan’s Principle, which generated about $ 58 million in domestic ticket sales – which is a far cry from Wonder Woman$ 412.8 million in domestic running in 2017, a pre-COVID era. Internationally, where the film is only available to watch in theaters, Wonder Woman 1984 has generated $ 106.7 million so far – another loss compared to Nolan’s Principle, but the cases were relatively minor when Principle came out in early September compared to the holiday season.
The film, however, apparently spawned a series of submissions for HBO Max, according to WarnerMedia. Still, the company didn’t say how many people actually signed up for HBO Max when Wonder Woman 1984 premiered or how many people watched the movie. If HBO Max saw millions of people signing up during the holiday Wonder Woman 1984, helping to increase subscribers to the streaming service, the massive box office loss may be a little easier to swallow, although it is painful anyway.
Still, part of WarnerMedia’s release strategy was just to show the films on HBO max for 31 days after release. To some extent, it makes sense; typically, most films have the highest ticket sales in the first three weeks of release. By that logic, most people who want to sign up for HBO Max to watch specifically Wonder Woman 1984 would have already done that. Putting the film back in theaters for an exclusive screening, even after four weeks of release, may be a way to try to appease groups of cinema owners.
What really hurts is for people looking to sit down in a week or two to watch a lot of DC movies or finally come Wonder Woman 1984 and not being able to watch the movie. Especially when people don’t know exactly when the movie is coming back. Although, at least the film was released and people was able to see for a while. The rest of the industry is lagging behind, selling and figuring out what to do with its films this year – and it’s not doing very well.