Is WB simply afraid of Wonder Woman?

[JarodRussell]

DWF wrote:

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All Wonder Woman needs is some inspired director/writer to sell a great idea to Warner Brothers and get the movie made, so far that's not happened yet.

Maybe even a directress and writress.


Hollywood is really an extremely male-dominated business. And it seems to me that filmmaking in general is inherently sexist.

[mswood]

Yeah WW has rarer had strong sales. Now the original Perez run did great numbers, for example, but as much as I like what Perez did how much of those sales came from Perez's huge sales success from years of Teen Titans being #2 or#1, to Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Like many people have said, what is Wonder Women? There is literally dozens in just the last two decades, some that are widely widely different. If it wasn't for Perez's art I would have never, never bought the book. And I like his take on the character. It's actually one of my favorite.

The current take, I utterly despise the art. And while elements of the story I like, its a tall that has so little in relation to the original creation, that its actually turn off for me.

For the vast majority of people WW is either her cartoon character (modern), Super Friends, Lyda Carter or just the symbol. With the exception of some of the modern animation mostly her character is utterly undefined.

[mswood]

Another really big issue, is that on tv females are by far the largest segment of the audience. In film its the reverse with Men driving ticket sales.

Hollywood is seriously scarred of medium to large scale budgets for a female action star.

In Alien, it was an assemble, and a horror piece. By the time Aliens came out, Fox had years to get information on the sales both at movies and home box office, and you can always argue that for many its the alien that the main draw.

With Sarah Conner, sorry the movie's draw was never Sarah. Really its the underworld, resident evil films that have a female driven lead, but those were originally fairly low cost films, that continued by aiming low.

Warners wants a hit, a large hit. That type of approach isn't going to produce a big hit, at best you get a district nine size success. And I really don't think the studio is willing to try for that.

[Dream]

mswood wrote:

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Another really big issue, is that on tv females are by far the largest segment of the audience. In film its the reverse with Men driving ticket sales.

The Twilight movies have an amazing 80% female audience.

Maybe Warners will try to make a Wonder Woman movie for those people?

[AvBaur]

mswood wrote:

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With Sarah Conner, sorry the movie's draw was never Sarah. Really its the underworld, resident evil films that have a female driven lead, but those were originally fairly low cost films, that continued by aiming low.

Isn't it sad though that it's so hard to even come up with a single comparable movie? The only action movie with a woman as the (only) lead character in recent memory that wasn't a cheaply made B movie and/or terrible (by general consensus) is "The Hunger Games". And since that was a HUGE success (highest-grossing non-sequel of the year so far), is there really a good reason why studios seem to continue to be so reluctant to finance big female-driven movies?

[Alidar Jarok]

Dream wrote:

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The Twilight movies have an amazing 80% female audience.

Maybe Warners will try to make a Wonder Woman movie for those people?

I doubt many of those women went to see Kristen Stewart either.

[theenglish]

Alidar Jarok wrote:

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I doubt many of those women went to see Kristen Stewart either.

So, you just have Steve Trevor with his shirt off for the first third of the movie on Paradise Island, an intense (but no sex) pool scene later on, and then with his shirt off when he is captured by the big bad and forced to mine special ore to build the secret weapon. Done.

[Gotham Central]

The problem for Wonder Woman would be trying to decide who exactly would the movie be made for. Comic book movies are traditionally made for male audiences. In general, women might go see them but the audience is primarily male because the primary consumer of superhero products in general are male. It has been repeatedly shown that the male dominated superhero audience is much less likely to consume female led superhero products. Thus sales of female dominated superhero comics are usually much smaller than their male counterparts.

Thus a female superhero has to make up for the shortfall in male interest is sufficient female interest. For better or worse, this almost never happens. Women have in general shown less of a interest in this genre. If women do not flock to a Wonder Woman movie in massive numbers it would automatically be a flop.

This is the bind that both WB and Disney find themselves in with female superheroes. How do you make a film that will attract women without massively turning off the men. Twilight is a terrible example because that film has almost NO male viewers and that female audience would never be interested in superheroes.

[Gaith]

Gotham Central wrote:

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This is the bind that both WB and Disney find themselves in with female superheroes. How do you make a film that will attract women without massively turning off the men.

Attempting... to... resist... posting... the image...

[scotpens]

JarodRussell wrote:

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Maybe even a directress and writress.

That would be "directrix."

Donald Draper wrote:

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. . .To create more interest in her they tied her as much as possible to Superman and Batman.

Well, she did seem to get into bondage situations quite a lot.

[Ian Keldon]

Sorry it's taken 5 pages for me to respond. I kind'a forgot this thread.

So the consensus seems to be:

1) DC has "translation problems" getting to the screen that Marvel doesn't have for some reason

2) Studio prejudice based on perceived lack of financial return.

and or

3) Studio prejudice based on latent discomfort with strong female characters/misogyny.

That about cover it?

By the way, No mention of Laura Croft or Buffy as successful female led action offerings? Yes I know Buffy was primarily TV, but they have entire COURSES in college based on her now...

[Alidar Jarok]

I don't think TV shows are quite analogous and video games certainly aren't (I don't recall the Tomb Raider movies being huge successes).

[Professor Zoom]

Ian Keldon wrote:

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By the way, No mention of Laura Croft or Buffy as successful female led action offerings? Yes I know Buffy was primarily TV, but they have entire COURSES in college based on her now...

According to Box Office Mojo, Tomb Raider made 131 million domestically on a 115 million dollar production budget. It did another 143 million overseas, but, studios don't get as much from overseas ticket sales. So... success...? Mmm. Not like Batman, Spiderman or Iron Man success, no.

And as far as Buffy... Let's be honest. It's a niche show with a VERY strong, very vocal fan base that's not actually THAT big. We have a myopic view here about how popular the TV show is. It's a cult show. And popular among the nerds and the geeks, and apparently professors, but in order to make a tent pole picture, you have to appeal to a LOT more people than Buffy ever did when it was on TV.

Edited to add: And it looks like Tomb Raider's sequel only brought in 65 million domestically at the box office on a 90 million dollar budget.... OUCH. A good example of why they might be nervous to green light a Wonder Woman movie. Even a star like Jolie couldn't bring in people.

[AvBaur]

Professor Zoom wrote:

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Edited to add: And it looks like Tomb Raider's sequel only brought in 65 million domestically at the box office on a 90 million dollar budget.... OUCH. A good example of why they might be nervous to green light a Wonder Woman movie. Even a star like Jolie couldn't bring in people.

Again, though: a terrible movie and a sequel to a mediocre movie that people felt lukewarm about at best. Besides Jolie, the Tomb Raider movies did not have the kind of talent (and money) behind it that most of the Marvel movies or the Nolan Batman films do.

I still can't come up with a single female-led movie that was actually good, that had the kind of budget and talent behind it that most of the big superhero movies have, and failed at the box office. Making the "action movies starring women don't sell" argument on the basis of Tomb Raider 2, Elektra, and Catwoman is like making an argument against male-led superhero movies based on Ghost Rider 2 and Green Lantern.

[Kegg]

Professor Zoom wrote:

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And as far as Buffy... Let's be honest.

It was by any account I've read a critical and commercial failure. Maybe some of the people with a better grasp on numbers can argue that it was a successful film, but my impression was that not even fans of the TV series that was based on it like it.