Patricia Lea Jenkins (born July 24, 1971) is an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. She has directed the feature films Monster (2003), Wonder Woman (2017), and Wonder Woman 1984 (2020).
For the film Monster, she won the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature and the Franklin J. Schaffner Award of the American Film Institute (AFI). For the pilot episode of the series The Killing (2011), she received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination and the Directors Guild of America award for Best Directing in a Drama Series. In 2017, she occupied the seventh place for Times Person of the Year. Her salary negotiations with Warner Bros. to direct the Wonder Woman films became a widely discussed moment in Hollywood’s ongoing conversation about pay equity. Jenkins's ability to secure a salary equal to male directors of similar-budget tentpoles was viewed as a landmark moment for women in the industry.
Early life Jenkins was born in Victorville, California, to William T. Jenkins, a U.S. Air Force officer and fighter pilot who earned a Silver Star in the Vietnam War, and Emily Roth, who later worked in San Francisco as an environmental scientist. Her older sister is Elaine Roth, her younger sister is Jessica Jenkins Murphy.
She spent her early childhood moving frequently due to her father's military service. Having lived briefly in Thailand and Germany, the family eventually settled in Lawrence, Kansas. When she was seven years old, her father died during a NATO mock dogfight at the age of 31. During a road trip from Kansas to San Francisco, her mother dropped Jenkins and her sister off at a movie theater, where they watched the original Superman starring Christopher Reeve. Jenkins found the film inspiring, and the experience sparked an interest in pursuing filmmaking as a career.
She completed kindergarten through her junior year of high school while living in Lawrence. Her mother then moved the family to Washington, D.C., where Patty completed her senior year of high school. She received her undergraduate degree in Painting Byrd, Lauren C. “How Wonder Woman's Patty Jenkins Became the First Woman to Direct a Superhero Movie: 52 Weeks of Directors.” BUST, https://bust.com/movies/18871-patty-jenkins-52-weeks-of-directors.html . from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in 1993, and a master's degree in directing from the American Film Institute's AFI Conservatory in 2000. While a student at AFI, Jenkins, an avid fan of the films of Pedro Almodóvar, made the 2001 short film Velocity Rules, that she describes as a cross between a superhero film and Almodóvar's tone about an accident-prone housewife.Woerner, Meredith (May 30, 2017). "The world needs Wonder Woman. Director Patty Jenkins explains why" . Los Angeles Times.
Beginning in junior high school, Jenkins took interest in photography, painting and screen-printing. At age 20, while interning at a commercial production company, she heeded a suggestion that she could receive film training if she worked on set for free. After doing so for some months, Jenkins advanced to second assistant camera and focus puller, then spent eight years as a camerawoman. While shooting a Michael Jackson music video, her director of photography recommended that she attend the American Film Institute to learn directing. She later made a superhero short film that played at AFI Fest. There she met Brad Wyman, who later introduced her to producer Donald Kushner, leading to her directing her first feature film, Monster (2003).
Career 2001–2014: Monster success and TV projects Jenkins started her career with Just Drives (2001) as her first film as director, she would later follow it up with Velocity Rules. This film follows a housewife who finds out she is a superhero and then has to choose between a life of excitement and glamour or her husband. The film ended up being a Recipient of the Warner Brothers Production Grant. These early short films helped Jenkins gain attention for her distinctive blend of grounded character work and genre elements. Despite being student-level projects, they circulated at festivals and helped her build professional connections that would later prove essential for financing larger projects.
This ended up moving her towards the film Monster (2003); at first she tried to get producer Brad Wyman to direct, but under his advice she ended up writing the script herself. Jenkins ended up writing to the film's subject, serial killer Aileen Wuornos, who was a street prostitute who went on a 1989–1990 murder spree of seven of her male clients, and was at the time on death row. Wuornos was initially distrustful of Jenkins but on the night before her execution, left Jenkins all of her personal letters which convinced Jenkins that she was the only one who could direct the film. Jenkins has said in interviews that this exchange with Wuornos shaped the emotional honesty of the film and deeply influenced her commitment to telling stories about complicated, often misunderstood women. She spent months researching Wuornos’s life, speaking with people who knew her and visiting Florida locations tied to the real case.
With a budget of $1.5 million and Charlize Theron attached to the film, Monster ended up being a commercial and critical success, grossing $64.2 million and earning Theron her first and only Oscar to date for Best Actress in a Leading Role.“The 76th Academy Awards: 2004.” Oscars.org | Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, https://www.oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies/2004 . Noted film critic Roger Ebert ranked Monster 1st on his list of the best films of 2003 and later in 2009, ranked it 3rd on the list of the best films of the decade. For this film, Jenkins won the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature and the Franklin J. Schaffner Award of the American Film Institute (an award for outstanding graduates of the AFI Conservatory), and also was nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Screenplay. Theron's physical and emotional transformation in the film is often credited to Jenkins's collaborative directing style. Jenkins encouraged Theron to explore the psychology of Wuornos rather than mimic her surface behavior, which many critics later cited as a major reason the performance resonated so deeply.
After the success of Monster, Jenkins was approached by former United States Air Force test pilot Chuck Yeager to develop a film about his life. When that project did not reach fruition, she attempted to make a Ryan Gosling movie titled I Am Superman, a film with no relation to the DC Comics character, but development ended when she became pregnant. Jenkins spent the next decade working in television. During this period, although many studios offered Jenkins crime dramas or biopics similar in tone to Monster, she turned down several projects because she wanted to avoid being typecast. She has publicly discussed how difficult it was for female directors—particularly those who made character-driven films—to secure funding for larger feature projects in the mid-2000s.
In 2011, she directed one segment in the made-for-television anthology film Five. Jenkins received an Emmy nomination because of her work on the film. Jenkins directed many commercials and TV shows, like episodes of Arrested Development and Entourage. She received an Emmy nomination again, for directing AMC's The Killing pilot. In October 2011, she was hired to direct Thor: The Dark World, the first sequel to 2011 superhero film Thor, but left the project after less than two months, due to creative differences. In 2014, she was attached to Sweetheart, a film about a female assassin, but that film was never made. Jenkins later stated that her vision for Thor: The Dark World was a “Romeo-and-Juliet-style space epic,” but Marvel Studios preferred a different tone. Her departure became a high-profile example of female directors facing creative limitations within major franchises, an issue she has since spoken about frequently.
2015–present: Breakthrough and worldwide fame In 2015, Jenkins signed on as director for the DC Extended Universe film Wonder Woman, with a screenplay by Allan Heinberg and a story co-written by Heinberg, Zack Snyder and Jason Fuchs, and starring Gal Gadot. Heinberg's script was rewritten and completed by Jenkins and Geoff Johns, who were left out of the official credits by the WGA. With this film, Jenkins also became the first female director of an American studio superhero film, and the third female director to direct a film with a budget over $100 million. The film was acclaimed by both critics and audiences and grossed over $800 million worldwide, exceeding box office original predictions. Wonder Woman eventually became the highest-grossing film directed by a woman, surpassing previous record holder Mamma Mia! by Phyllida Lloyd. However, in 2019, Frozen II directed by Jennifer Lee (with Chris Buck) and Captain Marvel, directed by Anna Boden (with Ryan Fleck) became number one and two respectively, dropping Wonder Woman and Jenkins to number three. Many industry analysts credited Jenkins with reshaping the perception of female-led superhero films, as earlier attempts from other studios had struggled critically or commercially. The film also became a cultural touchstone, particularly for audiences seeking female empowerment narratives within blockbuster cinema.
While promoting Wonder Woman, Jenkins mentioned that her next project would likely be a limited television series developed with her husband. This project was later revealed as a horror series titled Riprore, to premiere on the video-on-demand service Shudder. In July 2017, the cable network TNT announced Jenkins would direct the premiere of a six-episode television drama, I Am the Night, written by her husband Sam Sheridan, and featuring her Wonder Woman star Chris Pine. She additionally served as executive producer. Jenkins's work on I Am the Night allowed her to explore darker visual storytelling again, returning to some of the stylistic approaches she had used in Monster, but within the framework of prestige television.
In September 2017, Variety reported Jenkins would return to direct Wonder Woman 2 (which was later retitled as Wonder Woman 1984). However, on MTV's "Happy, Sad, Confused" podcast, Jenkins revealed that she considered walking away from the sequel due to salary dispute between her and Warner Bros. On December 6, 2017, Jenkins was named by Time as the seventh runner-up for Time Person of the Year.
Wonder Woman 1984 was scheduled to be released by Warner Bros. Pictures in the United States on June 5, 2020, but, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the release was delayed until December 25, 2020. It had originally been scheduled for November 1, 2019. Unlike the first film, the sequel received a mixed critical reception and was a box office failure. She has been negotiating the terms of her contract with Warner Brothers for an estimated seven to nine million dollars, which would be a record breaking salary for a female filmmaker. She signed on to the first film with no guarantee of directing a second film, but envisioned the second one during the making of Wonder Woman, which turned out to benefit her greatly. When she had signed on to do the second film, she had the ability to get a much higher salary than she would have if she had been signed on to do both films from the beginning. Her goal with her negotiations were to make sure she would get the same salary that her male counterparts would be getting for doing this movie and she seems to have succeeded. Despite the mixed reception, Jenkins continued to defend the film as a stylistic homage to 1980s superhero media, emphasizing that it was intentionally lighter and more idealistic than the first installment.