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After Tenet, Warner Bros. is ready with its other big release, Wonder Woman 1984. The Gal Gadot superhero film will release in India on December 24, a day before it does in the US. In fact, there will be paid previews on December 23 from the evening shows. So, effectively, the film will have a four-and-a-half-day first weekend. While Christopher Nolan’s Tenet, which opened on December 4 in India, had a first weekend net collection of Rs. 4.5 crore in India, WW84 is expected to open much bigger. Nolan’s films invariably score in the big cities in India as they are more class-appealing than mass-appealing. On the other hand, WW84 is expected to go down well with the audiences in the cities and the smaller towns and even mofussil areas.
Warner plans to release WW84 on 2,000 screens as against the 1,137 screens of Tenet. Of course, the exact number of screens for the Patty Jenkins directorial venture will be clear only early next week because Warner is demanding advances from cinemas for the film, and it is not known whether all the cinemas would oblige or some would let the film pass. In Andhra, Telangana and Tamil Nadu, the dubbed Telugu and Tamil versions will open even in those cinemas which traditionally do not screen dubbed films. As a source, wishing to remain anonymous, remarked, “The reasons why many cinemas are coming down from their high horses are two: for one, there is growing acceptance of dubbed content among the public, and secondly, there is no alternative compelling content available in the market because the release flow is slow.”
The opening in China, where WW84 released on December 18, has not been historic even if the tough pandemic conditions are taken into account. Tenet, which opened in similar pandemic conditions, reportedly opened better than WW84. Of course, a big Chinese film opened on the same day as Wonder Woman 1984, but having said that, it should be a wonder if WW84 grossed $20-million-plus in the first weekend in China.
Whether the first long-weekend collections of WW84 in India would be Rs. 10 crore or more, only the coming days will tell. Needless to add, the multiplexes have agreed to give a higher percentage of the net collections to Warner as its share.