Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman has recently racked up another achievement to add to it’s ever-expanding resume. The HBO premiere of the 2017 superhero epic earned the network the highest ratings it has seen in two years according to the Nielsen rating, a system used to measure and determine the audience’s reception to television shows.
The Warner Bros. break-out project managed to be one of the most profitable films last year for the studio besides It and outperformed every comic book movie at the box office in 2017, with $412.5 million in the United States and $821.8 million worldwide. Unfortunately, critical and commercial success didn’t make it exempt from being snubbed from the Oscars, alongside other superhero outings. However, nobody is questioning if the Gal Gadot-led film is one of the most successful DC films next to Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight and Superman: The Movie.
On Tuesday after the film premiered Nielsen disclosed the premiere numbers to the general public and they were promising. Vulture reported that the initial February 10th debut was viewed by over 2.809 million people. It performed even better than the coverage of the 2018 Winter Olympics by approximately 3,000 viewers. Comparatively, it was the biggest single-day audience viewing of a film on HBO since Dwayne Johnson’s San Andreas, which drew in 2.82 million viewers and is just 11,000 more than Wonder Woman without having to compete with a major sporting event like the Olympics. One can definitely make the argument that while these are still lower numbers, it is still impressive that it drew in such positive ratings for the network while the Winter Olympics are still going on. This is welcome news for those people who are somewhat still disappointed in the film being snubbed from the Oscars and are looking to just consume the film via on-demand and premium options.
As the fifth film within the DC Extended Universe, Wonder Woman also outperformed the other DCEU releases in their respective HBO premieres. It outpaced Man of Steel‘s 2.374 million viewers, Batman v Superman Dawn of Justice’s 2.33 million, and Suicide Squad’s 2.13 million. On a Sunday night it managed to draw the highest ratings for HBO since 2014, drawing in 1.6 million viewers in a rerun to surpass a replay of Fast & Furious 6, which also starred Gal Gadot as Gisel.
Wonder Woman may not have gotten recognition at the Oscars like the studio had been hoping for with an ambitious award campaign being launched soon after it premiered in theaters, but these ratings still prove that there is a still a lot of public interest in the character and that the film is probably one of the most popular releases to rock the film industry in awhile. It also raises the standards for how a DC film should perform on a commercial level. Vulture also stated that the Nielsen rating system does not factor in on-demand viewings or DVR recordings, which means that there is a possibility that the film’s ratings could be even higher than what’s been reported if you take those factors into account. It is welcome news for Warner Bros. which has been under constant scrutiny over the last few months after the poor reception of Justice League and a major victory lap for women in the film industry.
While Wonder Woman does not get to say it sports an Oscar it has taken home other awards like best stunt ensemble at the Screen Actor’s Guild awards and secured a place on the American Film Institute’s top ten films of 2017 list and the National Board of Review presented both Gadot and Jenkins with the Spotlight Award. Those are still notable accolades that I am sure they both take a lot of pride in.
What do you think of this news? Do you like Wonder Woman? Let us know in the comments section down below!
