‘The Batman’ Tracking for Massive Opening Weekend
The Batman, with Robert Pattinson, Paul Dano, and Zoë Kravitz, is opening this weekend — to how much?
Matt Reeves’ The Batman will finally arrive in theaters worldwide this week. In fact, as of the posting of this article, there have already been some public IMAX screenings in the U.S., and the movie has already scored big numbers in South Korea. Review embargo on the movie was lifted on Monday, and a whole stream of positive reviews flooded the Internet. Rotten Tomatoes currently has the movie with an 86% rating based on over 200 reviews, which went down from the 94% it had with the first 16 reviews.
The movie is tracking rather well with audiences, and most box office projections currently have the movie cracking the $100M mark. But where can it go from there? Box Office Pro believes the movie will deliver between $130M-$170M over the first three days of release in the United States, which could put it as the highest opening for a Batman movie ever, or the fourth-highest (more on this below).
Industry projections given by Deadline say the movie will make between $115M-$125M, but as we know, these are usually rather conservative. In December, Spider-Man: No Way Home made double what the industry and the studio expected it to make. That was an exceptional case, of course, but studio projections have consistently been underestimating the final opening weekend numbers.
Box office site The Numbers will put out its projections on Friday, which usually are rather on point, so we’ll see. As a point of reference, here are the opening weekend numbers of all live-action Batman movies, except for Adam West’s entry:
For the sake of completion, here are their totals, both in the United States and worldwide:
The Batman is the first big movie of 2022, whose box office has so far been dominated by No Way Home despite the fact that movie was released two weeks before 2021 ended. In fact, during its 11th week (February 25-27), Tom Holland’s latest entry as the web-slinger still managed to crack the #3 spot in the domestic box office charts, amassing $5.8M. It has now become the third biggest movie of all time in the United States, and the sixth biggest movie of all time worldwide. It will, unfortunately, fall short of crossing the $2 billion mark, at least during its first theatrical run.
While The Batman will not make No Way Home numbers, it has the potential to have a party at the box office this weekend, gathering people that are tired of watching No Way Home over and over again, and just want a new big blockbuster. Instead of targeting $120M, the movie should be aiming for the $150M mark, a figure it absolutely has the potential to make. That would still leave it as the fourth biggest opening for a Batman movie ever, but the jump to the #1 spot is not that big (Batman v Superman) made $166M.
Matt Reeves’ film also has the box office advantage of inflation, which is a real thing, especially in the past three-four months. That was a big factor for Spider-Man: No Way Home, and will undoubtedly play a role this weekend. Moreover, AMC boss Adam Aron told Deadline this week that they are going to experiment with a variable pricing strategy — they will be charging more to see The Batman than for any other movie they will be playing. While this is will inevitably carry many dangers into the exhibition industry, which is already on life support, we will not discuss it further. But it’s certainly an interesting topic worth looking into later down the line.
All in all, we are projecting The Batman to make between $150M-$180M. Stay tuned on Monday for the final results plus our review of the film. Meanwhile, enjoy it and stay safe out there!
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as authors like Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
