For many, the record-breaking arrival of Spider-Man: No Way Home into cinemas was enough to confirm that audiences were finally ready to return to theaters in large numbers, but one film does not signal a complete end to the pandemic’s impact on the entertainment industry. For that reason, The Batman has been seen as another indicator of exactly what movies will bring cinemagoers back. With the film now heading towards a $500 million worldwide milestone, it looks like the answer is clear.
Since the Covid pandemic caused the shutdown of thousands of cinemas around the world in early 2020, the film industry has been forced to constantly change release schedules and strategies to get some movies out to audiences via streaming, VOD services, or in movie theaters.
Following in the footsteps of Spider-Man: No Way Home, which surpassed all expectations when it arrived in December, all eyes have been on the next cinematic release to confirm that movies once again have the chance to bring in big box office returns. While the first two months of the year have seen some successful movies released, it is once again one of the biggest names in comic book movies which have brought movie fans out in numbers, and The Batman is now set to become just the fifth movie to pass a $500 million worldwide gross since 2019.
The Batman Was a Gamble That Paid Off for Matt Reeves and Warner Bros
The general audience perception of Batman being a big, action fantasy star has become hard to shake, as even in Christopher Nolan’s trilogy of movies, there is still something fantastical about the character that makes them full-blown superhero movies. The Batman is different, and it was clearly a big risk to take the character from his movie persona and cast him back to his original comic book roots as “The World’s Greatest Detective.”
In The Batman, Robert Pattinson’s take on the character is like Sherlock Holmes in a cape, joining Jim Gordon at crime scenes as he attempts to catch a very dark and disturbing take on the Riddler, in what comes down to a film noir that could well sit in the 1930s or 1940s when Batman was just getting started as a DC hero. While Matt Reeves himself has admitted that he was worried fans would not take to the detective storyline, it seems that his fears were unfounded as the box office numbers speak for themselves.
The scene is now set for not only a sequel to The Batman, but also the multiple TV shows that are being developed for HBO Max, which will continue to take Gotham and its criminal fraternity down this new, darker-than-dark route of grounded and dangerous iterations of characters that have spent too long as flashy and gimmicky adversaries for Batman. First to head into production is the Penguin spin-off starring Colin Farrell as the would-be gangster who now has Gotham to himself, with an Arkham Asylum-based show to follow.