Patty Jenkins almost quit 'Wonder Woman 1984' over pay issues

Patty Jenkins’ work on the critical and financial smash-hit superhero blockbuster Wonder Woman meant that she was always going to return for its follow-up.

But ahead of Wonder Woman 1984’s release, Jenkins has admitted that production on the film wasn’t entirely smooth sailing. In fact, during her recent interview on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Jenkins admitted that she “started to walk away” from Wonder Woman 1984 because Warner Bros weren’t willing to pay her what she deserved.

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Even though a Wonder Woman sequel was announced shortly after the release of the original, it took several months for Jenkins to be confirmed as its director. Jenkins admits that’s because she “started to walk away” from the blockbuster.”

Watch: Wonder Woman 1984 trailer

Rather than this merely being about a pay cheque, Jenkins insists that it was the “principle” of her not being rewarded for her integral role in helping Wonder Woman to its strong reviews and its £652 million ($882 million) gross at the worldwide box-office.

“I even said I’d be happy to go to another studio and make a quarter as much because it’s not a sequel.”

Before Wonder Woman, Jenkins admits that she’d had no issue with the fact that none of her films had ever made any profit. “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.”

Jenkins said it was especially important for her to be paid the same as her male counterparts for Wonder Woman 1984 because they’d been “paid seven times more than [her] for the first superhero movie.”

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“Then on the second one, they got paid more than me still. 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.”

Jenkins said it was a super “easy thing” for her to contest the amount she should be paid for Wonder Woman 1984. “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."