With $800,000 in Monday earnings, Warner Bros.’ The Batman has passed $350 million in domestic grosses. In arbitrary box office milestones, Matt Reeves and Peter Craig’s $185 million, Robert Pattinson-starring comic book actioner is about to be Warner Bros.’ fifth-biggest domestic earner. It will pass (by the end of this sentence) the $350.2 million lifetime cume of Clint Eastwood’s Bradley Cooper-starring, R-rated, $60 million military biopic/action drama American Sniper. It will sit behind, sans inflation, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part II ($381 million), Wonder Woman ($412.5 million), The Dark Knight Rises ($448 million) and The Dark Knight ($533 million).
Yes, inflation paints a slightly different picture, but the film has already sold more tickets than Batman v Superman ($330 million in raw domestic earnings and $350 million adjusted), Batman Begins ($206 million/$295 million) and Batman & Robin ($108 million/$213 million). It’ll pass Batman Returns ($162 million/$259 million) in the coming days, and may end up essentially tied or just below the tickets-sold total of Batman Forever ($184 million/$387 million). So, yeah, The Batman is playing like a rock-solid mid-90s Batman movie. Of course, none of the Batman sequels actually topped the annual box office in their day.
There has been a lot of talk, both here and elsewhere, about how little product Hollywood has been offering to theaters in the first three months of the year. Some of that is willful, with studios holding their prized cows for streaming platforms. However, the definition of a “must-see” theatrical has grown smaller in just the last six years. The kind of films that once thrived opening right alongside Batman movies (Honey I Shrunk the Kids, A League of Their Own, Pocahontas, My Best Friend’s Wedding, Mamma Mia!, My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2, Wonder, etc.) now barely exist at the theatrical level.
To be fair, Warner Bros. has been at the arguable forefront of, well, overestimating the taste of the American public. They released a slew of old-school “movie-movies” in 2019 and early 2020 (The Sun is Also A Star, Blinded By the Light, Motherless Brooklyn, The Kitchen, The Good Liar, Richard Jewel, The Way Back, etc.) to mostly empty auditoriums. Even amid Covid with their controversial “put our theatricals on HBO Max concurrently” plan, they were still releasing the likes of the Oscar-winning Judas and the Black Messiah, In the Heights, Will Smith’s Oscar-winning King Richard and Lisa Joy’s $60 million sci-fi original Reminiscence.
If we see fewer of those films at a theatrical level from the Dream Factory going forward, well, it’s not like I haven’t been screaming at the top of my lungs about this over the last several years. WB still has Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis debuting in June (following a just-announced Cannes premiere in May) and Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Worry Darling (starring Florence Pugh, Chris Pine and Harry Styles) in September. That most of WB’s 2022 (and onward) theatrical line-up is comprised of IP plays (Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, The Flash, Wonka, Furiosa, Will E. Coyote, etc.) is a matter of supply and demand.
None of this makes The Batman’s box office bounty less impressive. Covid variables and streaming pressures have turned every major theatrical release into an underdog. The Batman will pass the global gross of Captain America: The Winter Soldier ($714 million) sometime today. DC may have perhaps returned to its pre-Covid strength, whereby it was matching Marvel in terms of box office strength with Joker and Aquaman holding their own compared to even Black Panther and Captain Marvel. If Doctor Strange In the Multiverse of Madness doesn’t pass The Batman’s likely $775 million global gross, we may have to discuss whether there’s a new king in town.
