Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins has finally opened up about her decision to quit directing Thor 2. Jenkins was replaced on Thor 2, a critical dud, by Alan Taylor. The movie released as Thor: The Dark World in 2013.
The 49-year-old director, whose Wonder Woman 1984 has scored the biggest opening weekend for any film since theatres opened, spoke to Marc Maron on his podcast WTF about why she decided to leave the Marvel Studios’ project.
“Word got out that I wanted to do a superhero film and to Marvel’s credit, on a movie that didn’t require a woman at all, they hired me. So, I’ve always been super grateful to them even though it didn’t work out. They wanted to do a story that I thought was not going to succeed, and I knew it couldn’t be me. It couldn’t be me had that happen. If they hired any guy to do it, it wouldn’t be a big deal, but I knew in my heart that I could not make a good movie out of the story they wanted to do,” Jenkins said.
Directing the movie would have made Jenkins the first female filmmaker to helm a big-budget superhero movie but she realised that if the film did not do well, it would ruin her prospects of directing other tentpole films, something that probably would not happen if she were a man.
She wanted to direct Wonder Woman immediately after the success of Monster in 2003.
“I wanted in. I wanted to do a big superhero film after Monster. And I started saying that right away after Monster. People were confused, I got every ‘woman’ film, any story about women. And I was like, I want to make movies about women but I don’t want to make movies about being a woman, that’s so boring. I want to make movies about women doing all kinds of things,” she said.
After her initial meeting with Warner Bros, Jenkins met with the makers every two years thereafter but the studio “didn’t know what to do with Wonder Woman” and “were freaked out by previous female superhero films that failed,” she said.
That’s when she got the opportunity with Marvel Studios.
With Wonder Woman in 2017 scripting history at the box office and its sequel Wonder Woman 1984 doing well, both critically and commercially, Jenkins no longer needs to look back.
She is all set to direct Star Wars: Rogue Squadron in 2023 for Lucasfilm, and is also returning for Wonder Woman 3.
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