Will The Batman’s early streaming release affect its box office take?
Matt Reeves’ The Batman is a different and more grounded take on the caped crusader and stars Robbert Pattinson as The Batman. However, getting it from concept to actual product was not a piece of cake, or so to speak. The project first started life as a Ben Affleck-led movie, as the DCEU star was set to write, direct, and star. But, after Affleck left the project, Reeves joined and reworked the story to explore a different and younger Batman in a different universe. After filming began in 2020 in the United Kingdom, the COVID-19 pandemic forced the production to come to a halt. As a result, the film’s release date was also delayed to its current slate on March 4, 2022. According to Jason Killar (via Comicbook), The Batman will appear on HBO Max on April 19, 2022, giving it a 45-day theatrical release before it becomes available for streaming. The change is interesting for a lot of reasons. For one, WarnerMedia, under Killar, insisted on releasing films on HBO Max at the same time they became available in theaters. This led to mixed results, with James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad doing badly at the box office despite rave critical reviews. Meanwhile, Dune was both a critical and commercial success, prompting the immediate confirmation of a sequel. It’s not just the audiences that will pay close attention to The Batman’s performance at the global box office. Other industry figures will want to know how the upcoming DC Comics film will do before thinking about their current release strategy. In comparison, Disney has stayed away from simultaneous movie and streaming platform releases after the controversy surrounding Black Widow and Scarlett Johansson that made headlines for most of the second half of 2021. This decision is what arguably led to the commercial success of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings as well as Spider-Man: No Way Home. In other news, it was confirmed earlier this December that Colin Ferrel would star as Penguin in a spin-off to The Batman.
