Wonder Woman Sets Another Box Office Record for Solo Female Director

Wonder Woman has just hit another moviemaking milestone, as the highest-grossing live-action movie directed by a single woman. Helmed by Patty Jenkins and starring Gal Gadot as the titular superheroine, the DC Extended Universe film has quickly become an unstoppable force at the global box office – having made well over $500 million in ticket sales around the globe. It is expected that Wonder Woman (which has an official production budget of $150 million) will ultimately wind up being among the top ten highest-grossing superhero films ever, when all is said and done.

Currently, Jenkins is cowriting a Wonder Woman 2 treatment with Wonder Woman co-writer (and DC Entertainment President) Geoff Johns, even as the first installment continues to make waves heading into its fourth weekend of release. Wonder Woman has now set yet another box office record, ahead of it passing 2013’s Man of Steel at the domestic box office this weekend (and possibly even at the global box office, within the next week or two).

According to THR, Wonder Woman has made made $601.6 million at the global box office at the end of Wednesday – meaning, by either Thursday or Friday, it will have officially passed the $609.8 million earned worldwide by the 2008 Mama Mia! musical movie adaptation. That means Wonder Woman is (or, rather, will be very shortly) the highest-grossing live-action movie ever directed by a single woman.

Comparatively, Jennifer Yuh solo directed the animated franchise sequel Kung Fu Panda 2 in 2011, which went on to earn a robust $665.7 million – and seeing as Wonder Woman may yet eclipse that total, that means Jenkins may yet set another record for movies solo-directed by a woman at the box office. That being said, the case is different when it comes to films with two female directors (see, for example, the $742 million earned by The Wachowski Sisters’ The Matrix Reloaded or the $1.28 billion earned by Frozen, which Jennifer Lee co-directed).

As for how high Wonder Woman will ultimately fly when it comes to the larger DCEU: that remains to be seen. Although it’s all-but-guaranteed that Wonder Woman will pass Man of Steel at the worldwide box office, Jenkins’ superhero movie may yet surpass the $746 million earned by Suicide Squad worldwide last year, too. The $873 million global box office total for Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice may prove to be out of reach, even for Diana Prince, but second place in the DCEU would be great all the same.