Wonder Woman 1984: Patty Jenkins almost walked away from the sequel

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

Wonder Woman was a major critical and commercial success for Warner Bros., so you would have imagined that the studio would have been rolling out the red carpet for director Patty Jenkins to return for the sequel, but it seems that Warner Bros. wasn't willing to cough up the same amount of cash they paid Jenkins' peers.

Patty Jenkins did eventually make a lucrative deal to return to direct Wonder Woman 1984, but while speaking on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Jenkins revealed that she was ready to walk away at one point.

I started to walk away. I was gonna’ walk away. I even said I’d be happy to go to another studio and make a quarter as much because it’s not a sequel, on principle, no problem. It's interesting as someone who never made any profit in my career up until Wonder Woman, that I was always at peace with it. I was like, ‘Hey I get it.’ But now I was like, ‘Listen, I never made any money in my career because you always had the leverage and I didn’t.’ But now the shoe is on the other foot so it’s time to turn the tables.

"I don’t want to talk about a quote system that’s boxed me out and it’s not even true," Jenkins continued. "It was easy to find that all of the men not just had quotes, they’d made an independent film and then a first [superhero] movie. They got paid seven times more than me for the first superhero movie. Then on the second one, they got paid more than me still. It was an easy fight to say, ‘This can’t be. It super can’t be. And it really can’t be on Wonder Woman…It was an interesting thing to do, but it was an easy thing to do in the fact I was dead serious. That I was like ‘If I can’t be victorious in this regard, then I’m letting everyone down.’ If not me, who? So it became something I became very, very, very passionate about." With Wonder Woman 1984 already receiving rave reviews ahead of its Christmas Day debut, it's safe to say that Patty Jenkins has another hit on her hands, but don't expect Wonder Woman 3 to move forward with any haste. The director has stated that she wouldn't be doing Wonder Woman 3 next as she'd like to "sort of wait and see where we are in the world." Jenkins is also slated to take the helm of Rogue Squadron, a new Star Wars film that will be released in 2023.

Wonder Woman 1984 will debut in theaters and on HBO Max on December 25th, and you can check out a review from our own JimmyO right here.