Wonder Woman managed to help revitalize the, at the time, dwindling interest in the DC Extended Universe. Arriving to critical acclaim and some of the best box office returns for a superhero origin story, the film put director Patty Jenkins and lead actress Gal Gadot on the map. And the sequel has been highly anticipated because of the good will of the first film.
With the COVID-19 pandemic still occurring, it's a wonder if the sequel, Wonder Woman 1984, will arrive in October as it's meant to. Before the quarantine and the shut down of theaters, the film had already had it's release date pushed back twice from October 2019 to June of 2020 with the reason being Warner Bros. was trying to figure out where best to position it among the slew of blockbusters hitting theaters these days. For now, it seems the movie is on track to finally being released in October.
Like any successful franchise these days, a third film is guaranteed to happen (Along with a potential Amazon-themed spin-off)...and according to Jenkins it may be her last. In a new interview with the German magazine Geek (via DCMovieNews2), the filmmaker indicated as much:
“[Wonder Woman 1984] gave me a chance to do a lot of things that I couldn’t accommodate in the first movie. I was so happy to tell the Wonder Woman origin story. It was almost her birth, but we really haven’t seen what she is capable of. It is exciting for me to show her at the peak of her strength. But it is also very important that she fights an internal struggle: she is a Goddess and tries to help humanity. She is not only someone who fights evil, she tries to show bad people how to improve. It’s an interesting dilemma. The next one [Wonder Woman 3] is probably my last Wonder Woman movie, so I have to put everything I want to show there. We have to think carefully.”
Whatever your views on the Wonder Woman films, it's thankful that the franchise's solo narrative approach happened, as opposed to the needlessly connected nature that Warner Bros. was trying to have with the Zack Snyder-led films. And the studio parlayed that success into a string of traditionally-constructed, one-off films with Aquaman and Joker going on to being critically liked and each making over $1 billion at the box office. Not to mention Joker would go on to be nominated for 11 Academy Awards this year with Joaquin Phoenix taking Best Actor at the ceremony. So, whatever your thoughts, I think we all owe Jenkins for sticking to her instincts and letting each film be their own thing. Hopefully, both Wonder Woman 1984 and Wonder Woman 3 will keep up that success.
Wonder Woman 1984 co-stars Chris Pine, Kristen Wiig, Pedro Pascal, Robin Wright, and Connie Nielsen.