Amazing Word-Of-Mouth Is Making "Wonder Woman" A Box Office God

It dropped just 43% from its record-setting box office debut. This basically never happens.

Wonder Woman triumphed again at the box office in its second weekend in theaters, earning $58.6 million in the US and Canada, for a total of $206.5 million over its first 10 days.

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The film has made an estimated $435.2 million worldwide.

That's a 43.2% drop from the superhero movie's record-setting $103.3 million domestic debut — an astonishing accomplishment, particularly compared to how every other superhero movie has performed at the box office since the genre began to dominate Hollywood's output in 2008.

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That was nine years ago, with the debuts of Iron Man and The Dark Knight.

Since 2008, on average, superhero movies tend to drop 59%–60% at the box office from their first to second weekend in theaters. Wonder Woman's 43.2% drop is better than every superhero movie in the current "cinematic universe" era.

Adam B. Vary / BuzzFeed News / Via boxofficemojo.com

A movie's hold at the box office after its debut weekend is the best way to gauge its word-of-mouth popularity with audiences. But getting a film that has brought in over $100 million — a common event for superhero films — to hold onto more than 50% of that audience for its second weekend is especially impressive, and rare. Even enormously popular movies like Guardians of the Galaxy, The Dark Knight, and The Avengers could not clear that bar in their second weekends. Wonder Woman did, with room to spare.

To be fair, this is not an unprecedented achievement for a superhero movie. In 2005, Batman Begins dropped 43.4% in its second weekend, and 2002's Spider-Man remains the gold standard for a superhero film: Its audience dropped just 37.8% from its debut.

Each of those films, however, were one of just a couple major superhero releases in their respective years. Wonder Woman, by contrast, is one of seven live-action superhero movies opening in 2017.

At this pace, Wonder Woman will likely surpass most of its counterparts in the DC Extended Universe, the moniker Warner Bros. has bestowed upon its interconnected suite of movies based on DC Comics.

Adam B. Vary / BuzzFeed News / Via boxofficemojo.com

Wonder Woman's box office fortunes could not have come at a more crucial time for the DCEU, particularly after the terrible word-of-mouth that depressed Batman v Superman and Suicide Squad's revenues in 2016.

But even after adjusting for inflation, Wonder Woman's slower start hasn't hampered its progress when compared with other superhero movies' debuts.

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With no effects–driven action movies opening until Transformers: The Last Knight on June 21, Wonder Woman is only just discovering its full box office potential.

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