#Warner Bros. Wanted Wonder Woman 1984 Director to Cut One of Her Two Opening Scenes

Warner Bros. was not originally into the idea of two opening scenes in Wonder Woman 1984. Director Patty Jenkins says that the studio wanted her to take one of the scenes out, but she refused. Working on the sequel to Wonder Woman was not easy for Jenkins, who almost didn’t sign on to the project due to monetary disagreements with Warner Bros. In the end, the director was able to get what she wanted and production kicked off.

Though she was able to get her financial needs met, Patty Jenkins still ran into resistance from Warner Bros. when crafting Wonder Woman 1984. The movie, which is now in theaters and streaming on HBO Max, contains two opening scenes. One of which is back to the Amazon, and the other is the high octane mall action scene. Jenkins had this to say about being asked to choose one or the other.
RELATED: 2 More Wonder Woman Movies Are Planned That Complete 1984 Storyline

“It was not always written in. It was the success of the first film, but it was also something else. I wouldn’t have jammed it in there because of the success of the film, because it actually made the movie too long. We have two openings in our movie and we would talk about it with the studio all the time and they would say, ‘You’ve got to cut the mall and the Eighties, or you’ve got to cut the Amazon.’ I was like, we can’t, we can’t cut either.”

In the end, Patty Jenkins was able to get her way and keep both opening scenes in Wonder Woman 1984. For the director, she needed to keep the Amazon scene as it helps people who aren’t constantly up to date in the world of DC Comics. “The reason I ended up realizing that you need the Amazon is because… you do that thing where you’re like, wait, you have to remember all the people that haven’t seen the first Wonder Woman who watch this on a plane,” says Jenkins. “And suddenly it’s like, oh, it’s super hard to understand who Diana is and what’s going on without touching base there.”

Wonder Woman 1984 brings a lot into its orbit, though Diana Prince is almost always the focal point. The character ends up learning a lot about herself in the process of the storyline, which viewers can clearly see. Patty Jenkins says, “I love the fact that you hear all of the ‘being a great hero takes your whole life,’ you know? So there was this wisdom there that they were trying to tell her which is not about being the strongest or the fastest, it’s about these complex observations you have to make during life in order to become a true hero.” For Gal Gadot’s Prince, it takes some time for that lesson to sit in. “I love that she doesn’t understand that until that final speech,” says Jenkins.

Wonder Woman 1984 was a hit at the box office over the weekend, bringing in $16.7 million domestically, for a grand total of $85 million globally. Warner Bros. has not released exact HBO Max streaming numbers, but they claim that the sequel has exceeded any goals that they may have had going into the hybrid release system. The weekend ended with the studio officially announcing Wonder Woman 3, with Patty Jenkins and Gal Gadot back on board. The interview with Jenkins was originally conducted by JoBlo.

Topics: Wonder Woman 2, Wonder Woman, HBO Max, Streaming