As Warner Bros. announced in November, Wonder Woman 1984 will debut on HBO Max on December 25th, the same day it will open in U.S. movie theaters. But unlike most highly-anticipated films and series that usually make their streaming debut at around 3 a.m. ET / 12 a.m. PT, WW84 will drop on HBO Max at a time when everyone across the country is actually awake.
On Monday, the WarnerMedia-owned streaming service revealed in a tweet that Wonder Woman 1984 will arrive on the platform at 12 p.m. ET, or 9 a.m. PT, on Christmas Day. This means that fans won’t need to stay up late just to watch the Gal Gadot-led movie with the majority of the U.S. viewing public.
Can you feel the wonder yet? ✨ Don't miss #WonderWoman1984 in theaters December 25 and streaming the same day at 9am PT/12pm ET exclusively on HBO Max. pic.twitter.com/66MUMt7E4F
— HBO Max (@hbomax) December 21, 2020
In a follow-up tweet, HBO Max confirmed that its subscribers will be able to stream Wonder Woman 1984 at no extra cost, but they can also do so for one month. After 31 days, the movie will leave the platform and is only expected to return after its Blu-ray copies become available.
Available on HBO Max in the US only, for 31 days from its release, at no extra cost to subscribers.
— HBO Max (@hbomax) December 21, 2020
Unfortunately for fans, Wonder Woman 1984 may be the last Wonder Woman movie they’ll see for a long time. In an interview with the Happy Sad Confused podcast earlier this month, WW84 director Patty Jenkins revealed that she and Geoff Johns had already “beat out an entire story” for Wonder Woman 3. She, however, admitted that she now has doubts about whether she wants to make it with the world’s current state.
In a separate interview with The New York Times published on Monday, Jenkins implied that she would only move forward with Wonder Woman 3 if Warner Bros. could guarantee that the film would follow a theatrical release model.
“We’ll see what happens. I really don’t know,” Jenkins told the publication when asked if the third Wonder Woman movie would be her next project after her just-announced Star Wars feature film Rogue Squadron. “I know that I’d love to do the third one if the circumstances were right and there was still a theatrical model possible. I don’t know that I would if there wasn’t.”
Jenkins said that she would like to believe that WarnerMedia’s hybrid model (same-day theatrical and streaming release) is just temporary, but she’s not sure if it will just last for a year.
“But I’ll tell you, some studio’s going to go back to the traditional model and cause tremendous upheaval in the industry, because every great filmmaker is going to go work there,” Jenkins said. “And the studios that make this radical change [of moving their theatrical releases to a streaming service], particularly without consulting the artists, will end up with a very empty slate of quality filmmakers working there.”