A movie’s hold at the box office after its debut weekend is the best way to gauge its word-of-mouth popularity with audiences. But getting a film that has brought in over $100 million — a common event for superhero films — to hold onto more than 50% of that audience for its second weekend is especially impressive, and rare. Even enormously popular movies like Guardians of the Galaxy, The Dark Knight, and The Avengers could not clear that bar in their second weekends. Wonder Woman did, with room to spare.
To be fair, this is not an unprecedented achievement for a superhero movie. In 2005, Batman Begins dropped 43.4% in its second weekend, and 2002’s Spider-Man remains the gold standard for a superhero film: Its audience dropped just 37.8% from its debut.
Each of those films, however, were one of just a couple major superhero releases in their respective years. Wonder Woman, by contrast, is one of seven live-action superhero movies opening in 2017.