Wonder Woman Box Office Proves Women Go See Superhero Movies Too
A new study has a shocking revelation; female moviegoers will go see women-led superhero films.
Image via Pinetrest
According to Movio, a marketing data analytics firm, Wonder Woman‘s great box office performance is in large part due to female moviegoers, and the 50+ demographic.
“Wonder Woman’s audience evolved in a similar manner as most blockbusters but with some trends notably magnified,” noted Matthew Liebmann, Movio’s senior VP for the Americas. “While the female and 50+ segments of the audience generally grow over the course of the run, ‘Wonder Woman’s’ female audience nearly reached parity with the male audience by the third week.”
Libemann told Variety it is unprecedented for a superhero film to have an even split between male and female audience members. He sites Star Wars: The Force Awakens, as an example of a film with a strong female lead that got close, that audience was 56-44 male. According to the MPAA Star Wars: Rogue One with a similar set up had a 59-41 split.
Strong reviews and word of mouth propelled Wonder Woman into the highest grossing DCEU film domestically, it beat out Man of Steel domestically and internationally. For more on where Wonder Woman is at in the overall DCEU click here.
Wonder Woman also earned more older viewers than most superhero films, one can assume that some were fans of the Wonder Woman show from the 1970’s.
“[Libermann] noted that the audience share for moviegoers over 50 increased from 12% to 22% over the first weeks — 20% higher than other tentpoles. And 22% of “Wonder Woman” viewers are infrequent moviegoers (who see one to four films a year), compared to a 16% average for that group.”
Wonder Woman also appealed to older crowds with the World War I setting, most superhero films are set in modern day and distant futures.
These findings do shed a light on one of the deeply held misconceptions about superhero films, which is women are not interested. That is simply not true, since women normally come around 40-45% of the audience. The problem has been that woman have not been given a proper chance to be the lead of said films, now they finally got one and proved to be just as powerful at the box office as men.
Now studios needs to capitalize on this revelation and start investing in women-led superhero films. Some have are already taken on the gamble, like Sony with their Black Cat & Silver Sable film with Gina Prince-Bythewood at the helm. Marvel is the midst of bringing in their biggest female superhero, Captain Marvel. Fox is taking their chances with a Jean Grey centric story.
Source: Variety.
