Wonder Woman 1984 is leaving HBO Max this week

Wonder Woman 1984 was the first of many movies Warner Bros. released on HBO Max and in theaters at the same time. Now for part 2 of the plan.

Wonder Woman 1984 is leaving HBO Max on January 24 after spending a month on the streaming platform and in theaters at the same time. The pandemic dealt a massive blow to the summer movie season; Wonder Woman 1984 had already been moved from a December 2019 release to a June 2020 release, which mirrored the release of Patty Jenkins’ original Wonder Woman movie in June 2017. In hindsight, it was a bad decision to move it from that 2019 date, since because the new June date had to be pushed several times over the course of the pandemic.

Jenkins and Warner Bros made the tough decision to finally release Wonder Woman 1984 in theaters and onto HBO Max on Christmas Day so that fans who had been waiting so long could finally enjoy the film. It was a big experiment that seems to have paid off for the fledgling HBO Max platform. Now, WarnerMedia has decided to release every movie it had lined up for 2021 in the same way, because there’s no way of knowing how soon things will return to normal.

The hybrid release plan is risky, as piracy will be easier and the studio could potentially lose out on box office revenue; certainly some of the filmmakers behind the affected movies — which include The Suicide Squad, The Matrix 4 and Dune — aren’t happy about it. But the payoff is equally great. If there is a new way to reach audiences then it should be explored. HBO Max releases are a way to capture non-moviegoers while also giving fans access to the movies they have been waiting for, all while avoiding the risks of going to a movie theater during a pandemic. The benefits seem to outweigh the risks, in this equation.

And after these movies have spent a month on HBO Max, they make like Wonder Woman 1984 and go back to being exclusively available at theaters. Of course, by then, most of the people who want to see the movies on the big screen will have done so, and indeed, Variety reports that box office revenue for Wonder Woman 1984 has been dwindling. at the box office. The movie has struggled even in places where theaters are open for business, and looks like it will top out at about $118 million worldwide. But it’s hard to tell what any of this means because the pandemic box office is so fluid and a number of new lockdown orders went into effect toward the end of 2020. And of course, the movie releasing on HBO Max drew in a lot of subscribers, so WarnerMedia made money that way as well.

For now, though, fans can enjoy the last days of Wonder Woman 1984 before it flies off HBO Max on January 24.

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