Against a backdrop of more and more big films being delayed again, will Warner Bros hold its nerve with The Batman?
Photo: Chris J Ratcliffe
Another week, and more delays have been announced to films over the past few days, as cinemas look set to be starved of big movies for a month or two. Universal has taken the decision to move the awards-touted Cyrano from a January 14th release to the end of February. Disney, meanwhile, has taken the March release of Pixar’s Turning Red off the cinema schedules altogether, in favour of a Disney+ release instead (the third Pixar movie in a row to bypass the big screen).
That means that once this weekend’s Scream reboot is released, the calendar suddenly looks a little sparse when it comes to big studio fare. Sony has already shifted Spider-Man spin-off Morbius by a few months, Universal delayed horror The Black Phone, and Warner Bros was quick off the blocks putting Operation Mincemeat back.
It’s all eyes on Warner Bros’ hugely-anticipated The Batman, not least seeing how much money Spider-Man coined in
It means it’s all eyes on Warner Bros’ hugely-anticipated The Batman next, not least seeing just how much money Sony and Marvel’s recent Spider-Man venture has coined in. Against a backdrop of Omicron rising, Spider-Man: No Way Home has made pre-pandemic levels of cash, with over $1.5bn at the box office worldwide and still going strong. It’s got a good shot at $2bn too, given that the competition has got out of the way.
Warner Bros though now has a decision to make over whether the cinema business is currently robust enough to sustain the planned March 4th release for The Batman. The new adventure of Gotham’s hero, this time with Robert Pattinson in the cape and cowl, has already – in line with lots of other blockbusters – suffered multiple delays.
It’s comfortably the biggest release on the calendar in the first quarter of the year, and the indications thus far – much to the relief of cinema owners – is that Warner Bros isn’t budging. Promotion continues for the film, and the plan is to keep the film on its cinema schedule. That said, the studio has also acknowledged the Omicron surge, and WarnerMedia CRO Jason Kilar has told Puck News “we’re certainly paying attention to everything going on with Omicron”.
He added that “we feel good about the date right now”, with the little sting that “we’re going to watch it day by day”.
It’s comfortably the biggest release in the first quarter of the year, and the indications is that Warner Bros isn’t budging
It might just be though that, for cinema at least, the greatest power the current crop of superheroes possesses is the ability to still drag people to the cinema, even when the world around us is, er, ‘facing challenges’. Whether a new reboot of Batman can match up to the closing chapter of a Spider-Man trilogy remains to be seen. But it does look like – barring a worsening of the pox – we might just be finding out.
Not for the first time, for cinemas at least, Batman is looking like the hero we need…
