Trivia / Wonder Woman 1984

• Actor-Shared Background: Maxwell Lord's real name in the film is revealed to be Maxwell Lorenzano. Pedro Pascal also anglicized his own name for business purposes: He first entered the acting world as "Pedro Balmaceda", only to confuse casting directors who thought he looked too pale for a "Pedro", and/or couldn't pronounce "Balmaceda". He attempted to overcome these obstacles with the stage name "Alexander Pascal", pairing a Fanny and Alexander nod with his mother's last name. His guilt over rechristening himself so drastically prompted him to switch back from "Alexander" to "Pedro" after a year, though he only brings back "Balmaceda" when sharing his full name.
• Billing Displacement:
  • Despite Chris Pine being mostly absent from the film's beginning and totally nonexistent during the climax to the end he gets second billing, while secondary antagonist Kristen Wiig who falls Out of Focus as the film goes on gets third. Big Bad Pedro Pascal who has many scenes totally devoid of the other principles and the most consistent presence of the supporting players throughout the film gets billed fourth.
  • Robin Wright and Connie Nielsen immediately follow the four principles with individual credits, even though both are only in a single scene in the beginning far more focused on the young Diana's actress (Lilly Aspell), and there's several minor players with more lines and screen time. And Starring likely would've felt more appropriate.
• Box Office Bomb: The film was budgeted as $200 million, and grossed a paltry $46.5 million in North America and $166.5 million worldwide, a massive drop compared to the first film's $412 million domestic/$822 million worldwide. However, the film was severely handicapped by being released during the peak of the COVID-19 Pandemic in December 2020 when many theaters were closed, and those that were open were running at limited capacity in many markets. Warner pivoted to simultaneously releasing the film on HBO Max to boost subscriptions^note (and discontinued free trials to ensure those who wanted to see the movie paid up) and primarily marketed it as a streaming release, with the theatrical being an afterthought. It's unclear how much income the film generated via HBO Max signups.
• California Doubling: The bulk of the movie was filmed in London with some location work done in Washington, D.C. and Spain. Spain, specifically, is standing in for Egypt.
• Content Leak: Much like The Rise of Skywalker, the entire plot of the film was leaked on Reddit a year before its release.
• Creator Backlash: Even with hefty financial compensation, Patty Jenkins was furious about the simultaneous HBO Max release and even went on a rant against streaming services.
• Creator-Driven Successor: Of Flashpoint, which was also penned by Geoff Johns. Both feature protagonists gaining the means to revive their loved ones, but they end up unwittingly losing their powers in doing so. The entire world then plunges into chaos, which can only be reversed by giving up that which was sought after.
• The Danza: One of the aliases used by Ravi Patel's character is "Frank Patel".
• Dear Negative Reader: Patty Jenkins retweeted the comment of a fan who was defending the film from criticism regarding the premise of Diana having sex to Steve Trevor while he is possessing another man's body, comparing the film to Big.
• Delayed Release Tie-In: A Doritos tie-in promoted the film's original June release date, and the film's Funko Pop! dolls also appeared in the summer of 2020, months before the eventual release, due to the COVID-19 pandemic shutting down theaters.
• Demand Overload: When the film was added to HBO Max on December 25th, 2020, many people, including those who were successful in getting the movie to load, experienced error messages as they attempted to watch it.
• Direct to Video: In some countries where the COVID-19 pandemic shut down theaters and where no partner of WarnerMedia could release the film on video on demand at the same time as HBO Max, the film was directly released on physical home video and digitally in the first half of 2021, such as France on April 7.
• Dueling Works: With Netflix's We Can Be Heroes (2020); both have Pedro Pascal, superheroes, and Christmas 2020 release dates.
• Extremely Lengthy Creation: The film was released about two full and a half years after its production started in May 2018. It wrapped up production right around Christmas 2018 and some reshoots were done in July 2019. As stated below, the film was moved back a whole seven months and then ran into issues from the COVID-19 Pandemic so it wasn't intentionally done. It has had such a long production process that the first trailer didn't come out until a month after it was originally supposed to be released. Patty Jenkins confirmed in an interview that the movie was already done by the time the trailer came out and she was using the time until the film's release to work on a third Wonder Woman film so everyone can hit the ground running.
• Killer App: The option of watching on HBO Max brought in many people to that streaming service, to the point it became the most viewed movie of the year across all platforms in just one week!
• Late Export for You: France got hit by a double whammy in addition to the other release date changes. The film was supposed to come out on December 16, 2020 there, but the ongoing COVID-19 lockdown that was supposed to end on December 15 was extended for "non-essential businesses" (theaters included) — it ended on May 19, 2021. "Chronology of the Media" laws against the digital distribution of movies shortly after their theatrical release prevented it from being streamed/put on video on demand by local WarnerMedia partners (since HBO Max was not available outside of the USA, and using VPNs to get the streaming service legally is not guaranteed to work due to monetary/bank card issues). The film was heavily pirated there as a result. It eventually got a Direct to Video release there on April 7, 2021.
• Life Imitates Art: Uncomfortably so. Just under two weeks after the film came out, angry pro-Trump mobs stormed the Capitol, in a way that disturbingly resembles the movie's scenes depicting the streets of Washington, D.C. being overrun by angry mobs as society falls apart thanks to a Trumplica.
• Magnum Opus Dissonance:
  • Patty Jenkins enjoyed working on this film more than she did on the first to an extent, having criticized some things from the latter like Diana using a sword or the studio-enforced third act, and she defends the way she made it to this day (WW84 is the closest to how she truly sees the superheroine). She even left production of a third film out of Creative Differences when she was told she wouldn't get the freedom she had with this one. Most critics and audiences prefer the first.
  • The mixed reception hasn't stopped Warner Bros. from submitting the movie to every Academy Award category, something they've never done with any film in the DC Extended Universe (they later did with Joker, which had more obvious Oscar Bait features). It wasn't retained in any in the end.
• Playing Against Type: Pedro Pascal and Kristen Wiig essentially reversed the roles that they typically play.
  • Pedro Pascal is known to play very dramatic roles who often are cool scene stealers. Here he plays a villain that is an utter fraud and mostly pathetic, though he's more dangerous than he appears.
  • Kristen Wiig is a Saturday Night Live alum who has starred in a range of comedic roles post-Saturday Night Live, most notably Bridesmaids. Here she ends up pulling Tom Hanks Syndrome and goes from a quirky nerd to a sociopath drunk on power. Though her role in Mother did provide some hints that she was capable of it.
• Predecessor Casting Gag: Diana tells the story of Asteria, said to be the greatest Amazon warrior who ever lived, the one who originally wore the armor Diana wears in the final battle and allowed the Amazons to escape the world of man. In The Stinger, Asteria is revealed to be still alive, helping the world of man from the shadows, like Diana, for centuries. And who plays her? Lynda Carter, of course.
• Production Posse: One of the DCEU producers, Charles Roven, also helped produce The Great Wall and Triple Frontier, in which Pedro Pascal played starring roles. Pascal learned from Roven, during the production of Triple Frontier, that Patty Jenkins — who previously directed Pascal in the failed pilot for the ABC drama Exposed — wanted him to play Max Lord.
• Real-Life Relative: Director Patty Jenkins' son and Gal Gadot's oldest daughter appear in the final scene throwing snowballs at Diana and apologizing, and Gal's husband Yaron Varsano and their middle daughter are briefly shown riding the merry-go-round.
• Release Date Change: No less than five times for the US release date. It was originally slated to release December 13, 2019, then moved up to November 1, 2019, then was moved to June 5, 2020 in the middle of its production in the fall of 2018. According to one of the producers, the team (and chiefly Party Jenkins) had wanted the June date all along and were worried they'd have to rush to meet the November date. Once the schedule shifted some (especially with there not being a Marvel Cinematic Universe movie that summer once Guardians of the Galaxy 3 got delayed), Toby Emmerich, the new studio head, gave them the extra time they wanted. Before the marketing ramped up in Spring 2020, the film was then pushed back again, to August 14, this time due to the COVID-19 Pandemic keeping theaters shut down and wreaking havoc on the overall release schedule. It was moved once again, this time to October 2, 2020 to get some space from Tenet after it was pushed back. Then it was moved yet again to December 25 this time around, despite a rise in COVID-19 cases around the world in Q4 of 2020. Finally, it was announced in November 2020 that, in addition to theaters, the film would also be streaming on HBO Max for a month, as part of Warner Bros.'s Limited Engagement strategy for this and all of their 2021 films (which included fellow DCEU entry The Suicide Squad).
• Spoiled by the Merchandise: While probably inevitable due to the long delays, the junior novelization was released in July 2020 (one month after its planned release, but nearly a semester before its actual release) and disclosed most of the major plot beats. However, it does leave out the third act of the story, which has become common practice for such books anyway since the Turn of the Millennium due to spoiler concerns.
• Teasing Creator: While promoting The Equalizer 2 and Triple Frontier, Pedro Pascal would dodge questions about his Wonder Woman 1984 role by kneeling over, then joking that Warner Bros. installed a chip in his brain, which would shock him before he could blab any spoilers.
• What Could Have Been: Emma Stone was offered the role of Cheetah before the casting of Kristen Wiig.

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