After getting stellar reviews from critics ahead of its global premiere, the AMC Artisan Seal film made $248.85 million globally in its first three days, which is easily tops of any film this 2022. Of that amount, The Batman made $128.5 million at the global box office, with $57 million made by Friday alone. Unfortunately, The Batman wasn’t able to sustain the momentum for all three days, falling short of Christopher Nolan’s second and third Batman films, The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises, which made $158 million and $160 million, respectively, at the local box office in their initial weekend theatrical run. The Batman marks Warner Bros.’s first theater-exclusive premiere since 2020’s Tenet. Ironically, Tenet was Nolan’s last film with the studio, which also starred Robert Pattinson, before he secured a deal with Universal Pictures for Oppenheimer, which will star Cillian Murphy and Emily Blunt, among several others. In between Tenet and The Batman, Warner Bros.’ slate of films suffered terribly from a hybrid release, with James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad barely recouping its production cost despite positive reviews from critics. Having said that, The Batman’s box office performance is proof that things starting to go back to normal in most parts of the globe. Furthermore, it should make Warner Bros. and other studios think twice about going with a hybrid release for their movies again. The almost-guaranteed profit that exclusive theatrical windows bring is so good for studios to pass up, with other “smaller” films like Jackass: Forever and Scream 5 also pulling in relatively high numbers earlier this year. The only question now is how high The Batman can go. At the moment, The Batman is all but guaranteed to make it to the top 10 highest-grossing films of the COVID-19 pandemic era. All that is left for the film, for now, is to wait if The Batman can come close to pulling in the numbers garnered by other DC films throughout history. The Batman is currently around $170 million short of surpassing 1989’s Batman at $411.5 million with almost $400 million to go to surpass 2017’s Justice League. Ultimately, Warner Bros. should be pleased to hear how well The Batman is doing right now in theaters. The studio will likely still be smiling by the time that The Batman heads to HBO Max in April.
