It’s not difficult to imagine the sounds of rejoicing and expressions of glee at Warner Bros. after their DC Extended Universe blockbuster Wonder Woman passed $800 million at the global box office over the weekend.

It’s been two months since the superhero film, and first comic book adaptation to be directed by a woman, opened to a staggering $103,2 million. The movie, directed by former indie darling Patty Jenkins, almost single handily reinvigorated DC movies and the studio itself after a series of underperforming comic book adaptations. Unsurprisingly, a sequel to Wonder Woman has already been announced and slotted for December 2019. In an unprecedented move, Patty Jenkins held back on signing up to direct the sequel in favour of negotiating a landmark deal that will see her becoming the highest paid female director in history.

Before directing Wonder Woman, Patty Jenkins was best-known for the 2003 drama Monster about the murdering spree of serial killer Aileen Wuornos, starring Charlize Theron in an Oscar-winning performance. In the interim years, she focused mostly on television projects like AMC’s The Killing. In October 2011, she was hired to direct the sequel to Thor but left the project after less than two months over creative differences.

With Wonder Woman smashing box office records, Warner Bros. is understandably anxious to have her return for the sequel. After all, many industry insiders feel the movie’s commercial and critical success is thanks to the charismatic performance of lead Gal Gadot and Patty’s skilful direction. According to Deadline, negotiations between the director and the studio have entered its final stages with a new deal expected to be reached soon — a deal that will make Patty Jenkins the highest paid female director ever.

Not only that, she’ll also become one of the highest paid directors to make the jump from working on independent productions to big Hollywood blockbusters. However, the jump itself is nothing new. In recent years a trend has emerged where studios deliberately seek out to hire relatively unknown and inexperienced indie directors to helm their biggest summer blockbusters. Take Colin Trevorrow as an example. He burst onto the filmmaking scene back in 2012 with his very well-received romantic science-fiction comedy Safety Not Guaranteed. Producers Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall saw it and decided to hire Colin to direct the long-awaited Jurassic Park sequel, Jurassic World. According to Hollywood legend, Colin didn’t even read the script before signing on. A similar thing happened to Marc Webb, at the time only known for the bittersweet comedy (500) Days of Summer (2009) before he signed on to direct The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) without a finished script even existing.

Besides Patty Jenkins, Colin Trevorrow and Marc Webb, here are some other independent filmmakers that made the leap from indies to blockbusters.

Jon Watts

After Sony decided to reboot its most lucrative franchise for the third time in just over a decade, many fans were surprised to learn of the studio’s choice in a director. Much like Marc Webb, who came from humble industry beginnings to direct the previous Spider-Man reboot, Jon Watts also only had one film completed at the time of being hired. The young filmmaker made his directorial debut with the 2014 supernatural horror Clown under the watchful eye of Eli Roth. His next project, the road thriller Cop Car starring Kevin Bacon, was still in post-production when Sony came knocking, offering Jon the job of directing Spider-Man: Homecoming.

“Nobody has made a giant movie until they’ve made a giant movie,” Kevin Feige, the president of Marvel Studios, Sony’s producing partner on the Spider-Man films, explained their decision. “What we want from our directors is not necessarily leadership that can command an army. We want a vision that can tell a story and can direct that army into unique places in unique ways.”

 Jon jumped at the opportunity, accepting the challenge of retelling Spider-Man’s origin story yet again. With his two previous films budgeted at under $1 million each, Jon suddenly had $175 million at his disposal. Two months after its release, Spider-Man: Homecoming has already grossed more than $700 million worldwide and was met with widespread acclaim, especially for the performance of Tom Holland in the title role.

Gareth Edwards

This British director, screenwriter and visual effects artist has made giant leaps in his relatively short career. After impressing critics and audiences with his low-budget monster movie Monsters back in 2010, Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures hired Gareth to direct their highly anticipated Godzilla reboot. Monsters was made on a minuscule budget of less than half a million dollars, and suddenly the 42-year-old director was given a budget of $160 million to revive the Godzilla franchise.

Gareth’s interpretation of the legend was met with widespread acclaim, with specific praise aimed at his direction, the film’s visual effects and creature designs. It eventually grossed more than $500 million worldwide, attracting the attention of executives at LucasFilm and Disney, who thought Gareth will make the ideal director of their first stand-alone Star Wars spinoff film, Rogue One.

Once again Gareth received a budget increase. At $200 million this was by far the biggest film of his short career. Unfortunately, everything did not go smoothly on set. The producers felt the ending of the film wasn’t coming together as hoped and Gareth was side-stepped so that a new director could come in to oversee the reshoots. Due to the many changes in the film’s structure and editing, a new composer had to be brought in at the last minute to compose an entirely new score only four weeks before release. In the end, Rogue One was positively received and grossed more than $1 billion, with critics feeling “there’s little to complain about and much to adore”.

Gavin Hood

Born and bred in South Africa, Gavin Hood started his career making educational films long before he made his big break writing and directing the gritty drama Tsotsi in 2005. The moving story of redemption set in the slums of Johannesburg won both the Academy Award and Golden Globe award for best foreign language film, securing Gavin’s spot on the radar of Hollywood’s executives. Soon after, Gavin made his American debut with the modestly budgeted terrorism-themed thriller Rendition starring Reese Witherspoon, Meryl Streep and Jake Gyllenhaal. The movie failed commercially, but along with Tsotsi, it helped Gavin to land his next big project, the first spinoff in 20th Century Fox’s lucrative X-Men series, X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

Budgeted at $150 million, rumour has it Gavin got the job after star Hugh Jackman saw parallels between his character of Logan and the main character in Tsotsi. But support from the movie’s star couldn’t help smooth things over on a very turbulent set. During production, the press frequently reported on disputes between Gavin and nervous executives from Fox who was unhappy with the direction of the film. The South African wanted to portray Logan as an army veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, but Fox felt this approach was too heavy-handed and that audiences would lose interest.

Tensions escalated after a full-length DVD-quality workprint of the film leaked a month before release. It was downloaded an estimated 4.5 million times before the movie eventually hit theatres in May 2008, only to be met with an overwhelmingly negative reaction from fans and critics alike. After the movie underperformed at the box office, Fox essentially decided to reboot the franchise with X-Men: First Class a couple of years later. Gavin’s involvement with Origins undoubtedly landed him in director’s jail for a few years, despite widespread acknowledgement that Fox interfered during production. He eventually returned to Hollywood in 2013 with the much better received Ender’s Game.

Catherine Hardwicke

In an industry notorious for its lack of diversity, female directors are hard to come by. And it’s even more difficult to find one that made a successful jump from independent productions to summer blockbusters. Years before Patty Jenkins managed to win the world over with Wonder Woman, Catherine Hardwicke almost tasted a similar level of success.

After directing three well-received low-budget dramas, Summit Entertainment selected Catherine to direct the adaptation of the first instalment in Stephenie Meyer’s immensely popular Twilight series. The soppy teenage drama tells the story of a girl named Bella Swan that develops a crush on an attractive young vampire called Edward Cullen.

Catherine shot the film on a relatively modest budget of $37 million, implying the studio’s scepticism of either her abilities or the potential success of the material. Fortunately, they were wrong in both regards. Fans embraced the movie, rushing to see the romance between Bella and Edward blossom. It grossed almost $400 million globally, becoming the most successful film directed by a woman until Wonder Woman was released almost ten years later.

After five films, Twilight is still one of the best-reviewed films in the series. Despite its commercial and critical success, Summit Entertainment decided not to work with Catherine again for any of the sequels. The director insists the studio didn’t fire her, saying she rather chose not to return on her own accord. Nonetheless, it was widely reported that the studio quarrelled with the director during production, making her decision not to return for the New Moon adaptation easier. After Twilight all subsequent films in the franchise were directed by men.

Catherine moved on to direct a new version of the Red Riding Hood folk tale for producer Leonardo DiCaprio. Eventually, she went back to her indie roots directing the low-key thriller Plush (2013) and the drama Miss You Already (2015).

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