Warner Bros. highly anticipated superhero reboot “The Batman” is bringing cheer to movie theaters this weekend and showing Sony Group’s “Spider-Man: No Way Home” was more than a one-off success for the industry after two years of pain coping with COVID-19.
The film generated $57 million in ticket sales Thursday and Friday, Warner Bros. said Saturday, proving once again that film fans have an insatiable appetite for comic-book superheroes. That puts “The Batman” on course to become the top-grossing domestic release of 2022 thus far, said Paul Dergarabedian, a senior media analyst at market researcher Comscore Inc.
It helps, of course, that AT&T Inc.’s WarnerMedia is putting theaters at the forefront of its movie strategy again. Last year, with COVID-19 fears high and restrictions on theater attendance, Warner Bros. opted to release its films in theaters and online the same day, drawing fans away from cinemas.
“The Batman” is just the beginning of what Warner Bros. plans to be a better revenue-generating year at the box office. This year’s theatrical-only releases from the studio include the DC Comics features “Black Adam,” “The Flash” and “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom,” as well as the Harry Potter-spinoff “Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore.”
Before “The Batman,” the biggest opener this year was Sony Group’s “Uncharted,” which pulled in $44 million in its first weekend and has made a total of $89 million since.
Weekend forecasts for “The Batman,” starring Robert Pattinson in the title role, range as high as $150 million, the estimate of researcher Boxoffice Pro. Projections from other sources run from $95 million to $131 million.
All of those are well below “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” which generated more than $260 million during its domestic opening weekend in December and has made a total of $209 million in the North American box office since January. But it’s still the second-biggest debut in two years, bolstered by positive reviews from some 85% of critics, according to the website Rotten Tomatoes.
“The Batman” represents an opportunity for Warner Bros. to refresh its most-popular superhero franchise. It’s the first live-action film to focus exclusively on the character since the end of the Christopher Nolan-directed trilogy 10 years ago.
Filmmaker Matt Reeves, who directed “Cloverfield” and two “Planet of the Apes” installments, breathes new life into Batman, creating a movie that is distinct from Nolan’s “Dark Knight” trilogy but stays true to the character of comic-book lore. And the picture features both well-known and new characters, resetting the franchise for potential spinoffs and millions in revenue for the studio.
In “The Batman,” the former “Twilight” heartthrob Pattinson battles a cast of bad guys in Gotham City, including the Penguin, played by Colin Farrell, and the Riddler, played by Paul Dano. Zoë Kravitz co-stars as Selina Kyle, aka Catwoman, who helps Batman play detective, while Jeffrey Wright features as police Lieutenant James Gordon.
Reeves told the website Deadline’s Hero Nation podcast this week that HBO Max will be streaming a series, about the Penguin, that ties in with the movie. The streaming service will also host the spinoff “Gotham PD” with Gordon tackling corruption throughout the police department.
Warner Bros. has been trying to find a recipe to propel its studio-owned characters into consistent money-generating franchises. Since the end of the “Dark Knight” trilogy, the studio has produced mixed results trying to emulate Marvel Studios’ success by creating interwoven story lines with Justice League characters like Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman.
That’s partly because DC characters’ stories are less workable into a single narrative, according to Jonathan Kuntz, a film historian and lecturer at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television.
“DC has never quite mixed things up quite as successfully as that because of the disparate origins of its characters,” Kuntz said. “This makes it difficult to connect them into one universe in the same way Marvel is able to.”
Zack Snyder’s 2016 “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” and 2017’s “Justice League” combined DC Comics superheroes into new story lines but failed to match past franchise hits from Warner.
The two films generated a total of $330 million and $229 million, respectively, from the domestic box office, according to Comscore. While not outright flops, Kuntz said, Warner Bros. needed to return to its “tried and true” character that audiences know and love with “The Batman.”
“The more we know about Batman, the more we’re going to be interested in his rogue’s gallery of characters, such as the Joker and Catwoman and the Penguin and the Riddler,” Kuntz said.
