Box Office: ‘The Batman’ Nabs Record $129 Million Debut

It'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 $128.6 million domestic debut. It's a little low under normal circumstances, but it's still a decent 2.25x weekend multiplier. The Thursday grosses, including Tuesday/Wednesday sneak previews, made up a small percentage of the weekend total. The Batman had the biggest Fri-Sun opening weekend for a straight-up superhero or otherwise, besting Batman Begins, Spider-Man, Man of Steel, and Spider-Man: Homecoming.

The Batman was never going to open with the same amount of money as Batman v Superman. It isn't the first time that the Caped Crusader and the Man of Steel are teaming up, nor is it a multi-generational nostalgia event that appeals to a lot of different franchise fans. 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 well-liked actors, who are playing characters already seen in other live-action Batman movies. This opening is a win.

The Caped Crusader has an obvious intellectual property value, along with the commercial choice to cast Robert Pattinson in the title role. My daughter kept saying, "Emo Batman who looks like Peter Parker after he goes full-Venom in Spider-Man."

The trailer for Bat and the Cat was released in December of 2021. If you went to a movie theater over the last four months, you probably saw a trailer for The Batman. The film was marketed as the first true detective story or the super dark one. The marketing gave away almost every major action beat and character interaction is a point of frustration, but I won't argue with results. Nobody is better at selling movies of all shapes and sizes than WB.

The Batman made an estimated $28.2 million on Sunday. I expect those estimates to go up tomorrow morning once final earnings are released, as is usually the case with these big blockbuster releases. You can get another day of positive coverage on Monday if you underestimate on Sunday. The film played at least 30% in premium locations, including IMAX. That means the handwringing about a modest price increase from AMC and Regal chains didn't seem to have much impact. It was the second-biggest opening weekend since The Rise of Skywalker in December, between Spider-Man 3 version 2.0 and Venom: Let There Be Carnage.

The Batman had the biggest opening ever for a movie, with Warner Bros.' first $100 million. It's behind only Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part II, Batman v Superman, and The Dark Knight Rises in terms of box office take. It's the fourth biggest debut as a lead, behind the three previous ones, and it opened on a Friday. The movies earned $3.3 billion worldwide, mostly without 3-D or IMAX, on a $419 million budget.

With an A- from Cinemascore, mostly strong reviews, and three weeks of no new competition, the skies look bright for Gotham. Presuming the mere 45 day window doesn't cut into post-debut business, the legs like Captain America: Civil War and Man of Steel would still make a lot of money. It would be fine on a Covid curve since The Batman is cheaper than Man of Steel. The Batman is tied with Batman v Superman, Batman Forever and Batman Returns in terms of inflation-adjusted grosses.

The industry cannot thrive on superhero movies alone, and one movie cannot hold up an entire industry. Disney threw Pixar's Turning Red to Disney+ while STX delayed Operation Fortune indefinitely. The Batman is trying to prevent another stopgap in the slow theatrical recovery. Warner Bros.' first theatrically exclusive release since Tenet in summer 2020 opened about as well as I would expect for a Batman movie. Couple that with a global cume of $248.6 million and you have a pretty good picture of what's going on. The Batman performed like a bat out of hell, even though he wasn't the next The Dark Knight or Spider-Man.