Rise Of The Wonder Women

Can Patt Y Jenkins Make The Superhero World Safe For Female Directors? Warner Bros. Gambles $150 Million On Its First Woman- Centered Comic Book Movie With A Filmmaker Whose Only Prior Big-Screen Credit Was An $8 Million Indie: ‘ I Can Only Make The Greatest Wonder Woman I Can’

- Tatiana Siegel

Patty Jenkins is sipping some sort of healthy soup-like sludge at a restaurant in Burbank called Olive & Thyme. Dressed in black jeans and a white tank top, with a pair of aviator sunglasses perched on her forehead to keep her straight black hair from falling into her brown eyes, she looks like a grad student taking a break between classes. You’d never guess that this petite woman drinking green gunk is actually the most important female film director in the business today. She doesn’t think so, of course.

“I can’t take on the history of 50 percent of the population just because I’m a woman,” says Jenkins, bristling when asked about the heavy responsibility of directing Wonder Woman, the most expensive film ever shot by a person with two XX chromosomes (its $150 million budget surpasses Kathryn Bigelow’s $100 million K-19: The Widowmaker). “I’m just trying to make the greatest version of Wonder Woman that I can for the people who love the character as much as I do and hope that the movie lives up to all the pressure that’s on it.”