‘Wonder Woman’ has biggest opening weekend ever for a female director with $100 million

Warner Bros.

“Wonder Woman.”

Warner Bros./DC Comics finally has a major hit.

Patty Jenkins’ highly anticipated, critically acclaimed “Wonder Woman” made history over the weekend by winning the domestic box office with an estimated earning of $100.5 million, according to boxofficepro.com. That makes it the biggest opening ever for a female director (beating out Sam Taylor-Johnson’s $85.1 million opening for 2015’s “Fifty Shades of Grey”).

The movie — which stars Gal Gadot as the warrior princess who sets out to defeat the God of War, Ares — is the 6th biggest opening ever for the month of June, passing 2014′ “Transformers: Age of Extinction” ($100 million).

Though all the previous Warner Bros. DC Comics Extended Universe titles (“Man of Steel,” “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice,” “Suicide Squad”) have had bigger opening weekends, none of them found the acclaim both by critics or the acceptance by audiences that “Wonder Woman” got.

Things looked good for DCEU on Friday when “Wonder Woman” earned $38.85 million, which is a record-breaking single-day figure for a female director (this is also combined with the $11 million earned on Thursday). The movie followed that with a $35.6 million take on Saturday. A minuscule -8% drop (but, technically, +29 million from Friday if you take away the Thursday preview screenings coin).

As expected, women came out in droves to root on Diane Prince. According to ComScore, 53% of the audience was women, compared to 47% being men.

Comparing other superhero origin story movies, “Wonder Woman” earned more than 2008’s “Iron Man” ($98.6 million), 2011’s “Thor” (65.7 million) and 2011’s “Captain America: The First Avenger” ($65 million), as well as 2014’s “Guardians of the Galaxy” ($94.3 million).

But it wasn’t able to surpass 2002’s “Spider-Man” ($114.8 million), 2013’s “Man of Steel” ($116.6 million), or 2016’s “Deadpool” ($132.4 million).

Despite that, “Wonder Woman” proved that female-focused superhero movies have an audience and Jenkins, the first female director ever given the reigns of a superhero movie, can make this kind of movie as good (in many cases, better) as the boys.