Patty Jenkins is still very unhappy about how the release of Wonder Woman 1984 played out. Her second Wonder Woman movie came out in theaters and HBO Max simultaneously as part of Warner Bros.’ pandemic release deal with the streaming platform, and it failed to get as much attention as the first flick. We previously reported that the director had referred to the hybrid rollout as “heartbreaking” and “the best choice of a bunch of very bad choices” at CinemaCon. But another comment by Jenkins from the same panel is now making the rounds online and has provoked ire.
According to The LA Times, who published the transcript of the panel, Jenkins said, “All of the films that streaming services are putting out, I’m sorry, they look like fake movies to me. I don’t hear about them, I don’t read about them. It’s not working as a model for establishing legendary greatness.” People are understandably pissed because it’s factually incorrect. Netflix has released three Oscar-nominated films: Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma, Marin Scorsese’s The Irishman, and David Fincher’s Mank. Try telling some of the world’s most prolific directors that their films look like “fake movies” because they were released by Netflix. As for other movies released on HBO Max under the hybrid model like Wonder Woman 1984, well, Mortal Kombat was huge for the streaming service.
Small screens may not be the best platform to watch superhero movies, but that doesn’t mean that all films released by streaming services are of low quality. We get it; all options for releasing Wonder Woman 1984 absolutely sucked. If it hadn’t been available to stream, it would have likely had to wait over a year for a theaters-only release—maybe even longer, since we still don’t know when it’ll be completely safe for everyone to return to movie theaters.