A Geeky Viewpoint

Wonder Woman courtesy of DC Entertainment

Yesterday The HollyWood Reporter broke the story that Michelle MacLaren is leaving the upcoming Wonder Woman movie.

Michelle MacLaren the Emmy award winning Director and Producer has worked on numerous hit shows including Better Call Saul, Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones and X-Files.

MacLaren cited "Creative Differences" between herself and leadership at Warner Bros. and DC Entertainment.

A report surfaced this morning that MacLaren wanted to change some of Wonder Woman's backstory and add a animal side kick that Wonder Woman could talk to.   If true such changes would have very much alienated the fan base and potentially hurt large amount of revenue such a movie could earn.

Gal Gadot has signed on to play the Amazon Princess in several upcoming films including her first appearance in Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice currently scheduled for release in March 2016.   The Wonder Woman film is currently on track for release in June 2017.

In my fan-mail I received a question from James who would like to know:

What are the early [box office] projections for the upcoming super-hero movies? 

Limiting ourselves to the seven films that are currently in filming or post-production for this question lets take a look at these films:

Avengers: Age of Ultron: The biggest limiting factor to breaking every know opening weekend domestic box-office record ever conceived is the lack of large format screens.   The movie will lack some of the luster of its predecessor and clearly has no competition in the box office for weeks before or weeks after.
Prediction - $225 Million Opening Weekend Domestic / $590 M Domestic / $1.1 Billion Overseas

Ant-Man: A quirky Marvel film with no direct connection to the Marvel Cinematic Universe and is considered a part of phase two of marvel films.  

Prediction - $75 M Opening Weekend Domestic / $190 M Domestic / $325 M Overseas

Fantastic Four: A remake of the 2005 campy film less family friendly dropped into a very competitive month.   I doubt the remake will sell more tickets than the previous two movies only inflation will help raise its mark, some.

Prediction - $65 M Opening Weekend Domestic / $140 M Domestic / $275 M Overseas
I have a feeling right now that I am being generous with the Overseas total.  I know that several early predictions have roughly the same number but I am not sure the model is accurate for this film.  

Deadpool: An R Rated super hero film with a lot more social buzz than the others in that category.   A lower budget than many of those films, good social buzz so far.

Prediction - $35 M Opening Weekend Domestic / $90 M Domestic / $200 M Overseas
Hard to predict an R rated movie in this genre, how much potential audience is being blocked out. 

Captain America: Civil War: The Avengers reassemble in a Captain America story line which most likely sees our hero killed at the end of the movie.

Prediction - $150 M Opening Weekend Domestic / $500 M Domestic / $700 M Overseas

X-Men: Apocalypse: The closing of the trilogy of the younger cast bringing in several new faces.

Prediction - $125 M Opening Weekend Domestic / $400 M Domestic / $700 M Overseas

Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice: Our lone DC film on the list, with out much to compare to at the moment.   The buzz is negative or neutral at best at the moment.   Release dates flopped around several times.

Prediction - $125 Million Opening Weekend Domestic / $300 M Domestic / $400 M Overseas

Leaving little doubt what the next movie will be Warner Bros. announced the title of the forthcoming Batman vs. Superman film, Dawn of Justice.