Wonder Womanis going to go down as the biggest success of thesummer movie season. A couple of other movies made a little bit more money worldwide, but looking at the entire picture, Warner Bros. hit the biggest home run withWonder Woman. And they aren’t going to stop there. It looks like the studio feels as though the movie deserves some recognition during awards season as well and they are going to spend big to try and ensure that the movie gets somesuperhero Oscarslove.
According to a recent report fromVariety, Warner Bros. is planning a massive campaign and is going to spend money to getWonder Womannominated for Best Picture and to get directorPatty Jenkinsnominated for her work directing the movie. For a lot of superhero movies, this might sound like a fool’s errand, but in the case ofWonder Woman, this may wind up being money well spent.
Wonder Womanis both a critical and financial success in a big way. The movie has grossed $781.8 million worldwide, which makes it the fourth highest-grossing movie of 2017 worldwide and the second highest-grossing movie domestically, trailing onlyBeauty and the Beast. It also boasts a very impressive 92 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Not to mention that it managed to break some serious ground by being the firstfemale-led superhero movieof the modern era that also happens to be directed by a woman. Looking at it laid out like that,Wonder Womancould have a serious shot at somesuperhero Academy Awards recognition.
If Warner Bros. can pull this off, it will be huge for a few reasons. For one, no superhero movie has ever been nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars. Not evenThe Dark Knightmanaged to pull that off, even though that is considered one of the bigger snubs in recent history.Wonder Womanwould be breaking serious ground if it scores a nomination. As for Patty Jenkins, only one woman has ever won for Best Director at the Academy Awards, which was Kathryn Bigelow forThe Hurt Locker. So even scoring a nomination in that category at all as a woman, let alone for a superhero movie, would be huge.
This year we could also see Fox pitching a similar campaign forLogan, which also has some serious awards season potential. Though, the odds of two superhero movies getting Best Picture nominations are slim to none, so that could get interesting. It seems a little more likely that Patrick Stewart could score a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his work as Professor X in the movie, which wouldn’t get in the way of what Warner Bros is trying to do withWonder Woman.
The fact of the matter is, Warner Bros. is going to have to shell out a lot of money to try and make this happen. They have to pay for the stars and creative team to travel all over, print watermarked DVDs for Academy members, hold special screenings and advertise to getWonder Womannominated. Granted, if they can make it happen, it will be money well spent.
