Wonder Woman is a big deal for a lot of reasons, but chief among them is the fact that it’s one of only a handful of superhero movies to be directed by a woman. However, the Patty Jenkins-helmed DC Comics adaptation has entered another fairly exclusive club due to it having a budget of over $100 million; that’s because there are only a few movies which can be considered a big budget blockbuster (Kathryn Bigelow’s K-19: The Widowmaker, for example) that haven’t had a man in the director’s chair.
The subject came up when Wonder Woman was brought up at the Cannes Film Festival during a panel which saw Athena Film Festival’s artistic director, Melissa Silverstein, and European Women’s Audiovisual Network head of research and PR, Francine Raveney, discuss the state of women in film as part of Variety and Kering’s “Women in Motion” chat.
The former had this to say on the matter:
“We have our first female superhero movie coming out in 2017, Wonder Woman. I’m excited for that. It’s the first movie that a woman has directed — a live-action movie — with a $100 million budget. First. Its gonna be good. It’s like voting with your dollars. If you don’t support women, it’s going to have an effect on the ability for women to continue to have access to the marketplace.”
Wonder Woman is neither the first female led superhero movie (remember Elektra and Catwoman?) nor the first $100 million blockbuster directed by a woman, but the point is still a valid one, and there’s definitely a lot riding on the highly anticipated 2017 release. After all, assuming Wonder Woman and Marvel Studios’ Captain Marvel succeed, the superhero movie landscape could shift quite drastically moving forward.
