‘Wonder Woman 1984’ director Patty Jenkins almost quit sequel over pay discrepancy

"It became something I became very, very, very passionate about"

Wonder Woman 1984 director Patty Jenkins has revealed that she nearly exited the franchise over pay discrepancy.

The director helmed 2017’s original Wonder Woman, though it took a while for Jenkins to be confirmed as the DC sequel’s director.

She has now revealed that in that time she almost walked away from the movie over pay disparity, recalling to the Happy Sad Confused podcast: “It’s interesting as someone who never made any profit in my career up until Wonder Woman, that I was always at peace with it. I was like, ‘Hey I get it.’

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“But now I was like, ‘Listen, I never made any money in my career because you always had the leverage and I didn’t.’ But now the shoe is on the other foot so it’s time to turn the tables.”

Wonder Woman
Wonder Woman 1984 (Credit: Warner Bros)

Explaining how male directors have been paid more than their female counterparts, Jenkins continued: “I don’t want to talk about a quote system that’s boxed me out and it’s not even true.

“It was easy to find that all of the men not just had quotes, they’d made an independent film and then a first [superhero] movie. They got paid seven times more than me for the first superhero movie. Then on the second one, they got paid more than me still.”

Gal Gadot
Patty Jenkins and Gal Gadot in Los Angeles in January 2019. Credit: Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for Turner

She added: “It was an easy fight to say, ‘This can’t be. It super can’t be. And it really can’t be on Wonder Woman… It was an interesting thing to do, but it was an easy thing to do in the fact I was dead serious.

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“That I was like ‘If I can’t be victorious in this regard, then I’m letting everyone down.’ If not me, who? So it became something I became very, very, very passionate about.”

Meanwhile, it has been confirmed that Wonder Woman 1984 will become available on video on demand in the UK from January 13.

In a four-star review of the new movie, NME wrote: “It’s warm, uplifting and more than anything, filled with a comforting sense of hope, much needed in these unsettling times. And it does all this without scrimping on kick-ass action sequences, which are pure euphoria.”

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