"Conservative" budget?

Unfortunatly because it all about women the budget wasn't so big but sometimes that's not always bad look how great the movie was they used what they had and used it well and focused more on story which made a great balance in the movie with everything.

149 million is still quite a large budget for a movie. This doesn't include the marketing and distribution costs, which can cost $100 million by itself. Also, Civil War had Robert Downey Jr, and his salary for Iron Man is $50 million for each film alone.

At least the small budget was notable in certain of the CGI scenes. Some of the water scenes at the beginning were awkwardly done.

You have to remember a few things. Civil War, Suicide Squad, Guardians of the Galaxy, X-Men, and Batman v Superman all had ensemble casts. Three of those movies were team films and Civil War, despite being a Captain America movie, still featured two teams of Avengers battling each other. That's a lot of characters, most of which, have unique powers, which will boost the special effects budget. Two of these movies, Guardians of the Galaxy and Dr Strange, also feature different worlds and some trippy settings, which would also raise the budget. Then you get into the various big name actors tied to these movies, which will make them even more expensive.

Wonder Woman featured only one hero, wasn't set in another realm or anything, and Chris Pine was probably the biggest star and he's a bit of a b-lister. It made for a cheaper film (and only 16 mil cheaper than Dr. Strange).

That's still a high budget, it's just not sky-high.

Personally, I suspect that someone at the studio had realized that all the previous DC films were SO awful that the hits couldn't possibly last.

Yes...Wonder Woman was a risk...well more of a complete unknown...There just hasn't been Any MASSIVE Female Superhero movies...There just wasn't no evidence that the same Audience that sees Superhero movies would also see A Female driven Superhero movie..You got to believe most of the audience would carry over but there was no facts to prove that...

Also another HUGE reason for A reduced/conservative Budget had to be The Disappoint of the first 3 DCEU films, MOS,BvS and Suicide Squad All Disappointed it a great way...Audiences were not at all enjoying the films and direction of the DCEU films...WB had to be concerned Wonder Woman might Suffer from The awful Word Of Mouth of the previous DCEU films...The one-two punch Of BvS and SS coming out and being Universally hated, had to make WB not as confident in Wonder Woman...historically speaking when a film or 2 films are that disliked, The next films suffers, there havn't been many "Shared Universes" to look at, but there are plenty of Francgise that have had 4 or more films, and when You have one or 2 films in a row disappoint, It has a huge effect on the next film...WB literally had to be extremely worried about Audiences showing up and carry over after Both BvS and SS resulted in Awful word of mouth...

so giving the fact that Wonder Woman is basically the first of its kind, A superhero movie based on A female lead, With A Female director that doesn't have track record of directing Blockbuster movies, given that Wonder Woman was coming out directly after 2 DCEU films that received almost unprecedented dislike and hate ...yes WB got Conservative and It was the right decision...there simply was no way know how Wonder Woman would do

Every film is a financial risk. This movie's budget is consistent with other introductory superhero features like Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, Ant Man, etc. Production was well underway before Suicide Squad and Batman v Superman, so any speculation on those movies effecting this one's budget is inaccurate.

You have to ask yourself..when comparing those films. Why would the budget of Wonder Woman be more than some of those films or the same? What about Wonder Woman should push its budget to those sky high levels? You have an unproven lead that is not getting superstar money because she isn't a superstar, Chris Pine who is high B or low A list actor again probably not making huge money and a relatively cheap director with an unproven track record for a film that is following the not so great response of three prior films. This film may have started production while two of those films were in theaters but there is little question their performances could effect the final budget of a film like Wonder Woman. A final budget that was still very high.

And the budget decision was also justified at least in opening weekend. Wonder Woman opened the weakest of the 4 films:
MOS 117 mil
BvS 167 mil
Suic 134 mil
WW 104 mil

People didn't really notice because news/net were too worried about pushing a narrative about the director/star's gender rather than the reality of the film didn't open as well as the previous films. It wasn't till week 2 and more importantly week 3 before the film was actually proving to be successful.

So did they take a risk? yes. Unproven Star, unproven director, least popular character of DC's big three (heck in 2017 you could make the argument she isn't even the most popular female character in DC), questionable performance of prior films. Yet they still spent 150 mil dollars...considerably more than Logan and Deadpool both very popular characters with better known actors.