After the runaway performance of Spider-Man: No Way Home, it was inevitable that The Batman, both the next superhero movie to hit the screens and the blockbuster theaters have their hopes set on for the month, would feel some scrutinizing pressure. And it has stood up to the challenge. Blake & Wang P.A Brandon Blake has more.
The Best Opening Weekend of 2022
It was near-inevitable that this would be the best international industry opening and domestic opening weekend for 2022 so far, but the real question was always whether that would be a worthy win or just a default due to spotty releases and the dominance of blockbusters in the theatrical market currently.
On that, The Batman has managed to deliver, which must be incentivizing for the industry as a whole. It netted a chunky $248.5M in its first 3 days globally. This makes it the biggest opening weekend for Warner Brothers since 2019, and its best international opening in a gauntlet of countries post-pandemic. And without Chinese or Japanese revenue yet featuring in the mix, too.
No. 1 Film
Currently, The Batman stands at No 1 film in 73 of the 74 territories it's playing in, with those 74 countries representing 80% of the global Box Office. It opened on 30,000 screens, too. IMAX has been a surprising driver of its success, pulling in $7.3M of that global total to make its own biggest weekend of 2022 and second-biggest since 2019. This puts it only slightly behind the iconic The Dark Knight Rises and it’s only in its first week.
It’s also one of only 2 films post-pandemic to open at over $100M in the US. Again, IMAX made up $15M of that, and the film performed extraordinarily well in key markets like NYC and LA. Critics and audiences alike have been satisfied with its storytelling, too.
It seems the movie-going experience is not as dead as all that after all. We saw plenty of detractors saying the world didn’t need another Batman story at all. Apparently, they were wrong. Hopefully, this will go on to mean better things for the theater market overall, too, and it’s not impossible that The Batman will slide in as Warner Brothers’ next billion dollar film. This entertainment attorney is glad to see the naysayers proved wrong on this one.
