Up until the release of Wonder Woman in the summer of 2017, it had been fourteen years since Patty Jenkins last directed a feature film. Her previous effort Monster had scored widespread critical acclaim, earned almost $65 million at the box office on an $8 million budget and nabbed Charlize Theron an Academy Award for Best Actress, but she’s dived headfirst into the blockbuster business since making her return behind the camera.
Wonder Woman 1984 may have struggled commercially due to the effects of the pandemic, while reviews were a lot more muted second time around, but a third installment was fast-tracked into development just days after the DCEU sequel was released. Jenkins is now gearing to shoot Star Wars: Rogue Squadron, and that Cleopatra epic with Gal Gadot remains firmly on the cards.
The filmmaker has spoken at length about Wonder Woman 1984‘s simultaneous HBO Max release, describing it as the best option out of a bunch of bad ones. In a new interview, the 50 year-old admitted that she’s got no interest whatsoever in directing a movie for Netflix, or any other streaming service for that matter.
“I make movies for the big-screen experience. I won’t make one. I like working with Netflix for television, I wouldn’t make a movie there or any streaming service with those terms. It’s hard to market a movie when it has a limited run.”
Netflix have attracted some of the biggest, best and brightest talents in the industry through the promise of almost complete creative freedom, but that clearly doesn’t appeal to Jenkins, who wants to see her work played exclusively in theaters. It’ll be interesting to see if that opinion changes at all, though, when streaming has been largely immune from the effects of the COVID-19 era.
