‘The Batman’ Nabs Record $129 Million Debut

Now that’s more like it, Mr. Wayne. After a Thursday-skewed opening day gross (with 38% of its $57 million Friday gross made up from pre-release previews), The Batman kicked box office butt on Saturday and Sunday for a rock-solid $128.5 million domestic debut. That’s a decent 2.25x weekend multiplier, a little low under normal circumstances not far behind The Dark Knight ($158 million from a $67 million Friday in 2008) and Joker ($96 million/$40 million in 2019). The Thursday grosses, including Tuesday/Wednesday sneak previews, made up a business-as-usual (for a more fan-driven superhero flick) 17% of the weekend total). More importantly, The Batman nabbed the biggest Fri-Sun opening weekend for any straight-up reboot, superhero or otherwise, besting Batman Begins ($73 million in five days), Amazing Spider-Man ($134 million in six days), Man of Steel ($128 million) and Spider-Man: Homecoming ($117 million).

The Batman was never going to open with grosses on par with Batman v Superman ($166 million in 2016), let alone Spider-Man: No Way Home ($260 million). It’s not the first ever pairing of the Caped Crusader and the Man of Steel, nor is it a multi-generational nostalgia event that appeals to half-a-dozen different franchise fanbases in one kid-friendly package. Matt Reeves’ The Batman is a three-hour, action-lite, grimdark detective melodrama that exists outside of any existing franchise, including the ongoing DC Films continuity. The cast is made up of well-respected but not “butts in seats bankable” draws (Robert Pattinson, Zoe Kravitz, Colin Farrell, Paul Dano, etc.) playing characters already seen in other live-action Batman movies (Catwoman, Penguin, Riddler) in a story not that different from what’s come before on the big screen. This opening is a best-case-scenario win.

Credit the obvious IP value of the Caped Crusader in live-action cinematic form, along with the canny commercial choice to cast media-friendly Robert Pattinson in the title role. Like Tom Hardy in Venom or Tom Holland in Uncharted, Pattinson’s onscreen/offscreen persona made him an added value element playing (as my daughter kept saying) “Emo Batman who looks like Peter Parker after he goes full-Venom in Spider-Man 3.” The marketing campaign has been relentless, beginning with a super-early trailer at the 2020 DC Fandome event (back when the film was hopefully still going to open October 1, 2021) and then launching the rest of the marketing in, well, October 2021 with the trailer that played in almost every theater showing Venom: Let There Be Blood, No Time to Die, Eternals, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Spider-Man: No Way Home and Matrix Resurrections.

The “Bat and the Cat” trailer debuted in late December 2021. If you went to a theater for any “big” movie (save for maybe Sing 2 or Encanto) over the last four months, you probably saw a splashy trailer for The Batman. Yes, I’d argue there was a lot of generational amnesia at play in terms of selling the film as “the first true detective story” or “this time, it’s super dark and about political corruption” or what-have-you, but A) that’s my personal pet peeve and B) it clearly worked. That the marketing gave away almost every major action beat and character interaction is also a point of frustration, but I won’t argue with results. When WB is on its game, nobody is better at selling movies of all shapes (American Sniper), sizes (A Star Is Born) and dispositions (It).

The Batman earned $57.1 million on Friday, $43.2 million on Saturday and an estimated $28.2 million on Sunday. I’m expecting those estimates to go up tomorrow morning once final earnings are released, as is usually the case with these big blockbuster releases. Why overestimate on Sunday when you can underestimate and get another day of positive coverage on Monday? The film played a whopping 30% in premium (IMAX, Dolby, etc.) locations, including $15 million in IMAX alone. That means the handwringing about a modest price increase from AMC and Regal chains (for this specific movie, rather than an across-the-board price hike) didn’t seem to have much impact. It was, obviously, the second-biggest opening weekend since The Rise of Skywalker in December 2019, between Spider-Man 3 version 2.0 ($260 million) and Venom: Let There Be Carnage ($90 million).

Here’s some arbitrary trivia: The Batman had the biggest opening ever for a “part one” Batman movie (Dawn of Justice is still a sequel to Man of Steel) and Warner Bros.’ first $100 million-plus debut since It ($123 million) in September 2017. Among all WB debuts, it’s behind only Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part II ($169 million), Batman v Superman ($166 million), The Dark Knight Rises ($160 million) and The Dark Knight ($158 million). Amusingly, it’s only Pattinson’s fourth biggest debut as a lead, since it’s behind all three “opened on a Friday” Twilight sequels ($142 million in 2009, $138 million in 2011 and $141 million in 2012). I know everyone likes to bag on the Twilight movies for “Eww… cooties!” reasons, but they earned $3.3 billion worldwide mostly sans 3-D or IMAX on a combined $419 million budget.

With an A- from Cinemascore, mostly strong reviews (85% and 7.7/10 from Rotten Tomatoes) and three weeks of absolutely no new competition, the skies look bright for Gotham. Worst-case-scenario, presuming the mere 45-day window does not cut into post-debut business, are legs like Captain America: Civil War ($409 million from a $179 million debut) or Man of Steel ($291 million/$128 million), which still gets The Batman to $293 million. That would be fine on a Covid curve, especially since the $185 million The Batman is cheaper than the $225 million Man of Steel. Legs on par with Captain Marvel ($427 million from a $154 million debut on this very weekend in 2019) gets The Batman to $356 million, or ironically about tied with the $349-$382 million inflation-adjusted grosses of Batman v Superman, Batman Forever and Batman Returns.

One movie cannot hold up an entire theatrical industry, and the industry cannot thrive on Marvel/DC superhero movies alone. So, no, I’m not thrilled that Disney threw Pixar’s Turning Red to Disney+ while STX delayed Operation Fortune indefinitely. But The Batman is surely doing its part to prevent another man-made stopgap in the slow theatrical recovery. Warner Bros,’ first theatrically exclusive release since Tenet in summer 2020 (and before that The Way Back in March 2020) opened about as well as I’d expect for a “just another Batman movie” even in non-Covid/non-streaming times. Couple that with a global cume of $248.5 million, with little reason to presume a post-debut crash, and so far, so good. Looking at this as not the next The Dark Knight but the next Spider-Man: Homecoming, The Batman performed like a, well, bat out of hell.