The Batman Box Office Collection Day 3: Robert Pattinson’s film lands on $128.5 million on FIRST weekend

Robert Pattinson’s ‘The Batman’ collected a mighty $128.5 million in its box office debut in North America, making it only the second pandemic-era movie to cross the $100-million mark in a single weekend. The feat was first achieved by ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’, which launched last December to a historic $260 million. The film, based on the DC Comics character Batman, is the biggest opener of 2022 thus far and the highest-grossing film released this year in North America after just one weekend in theaters. It’s also the second-biggest debut of the COVID-19 pandemic era, only behind another superhero film “Spider-Man: No Way Home.”

Pattinson’s moody take on the Caped Crusader is shaping up to be a commercial winner for Warner Bros, which had shelled out $200 million to produce the film and spent many millions more in marketing and distribution costs. “Bringing ‘The Batman’ to the big screen doesn’t come cheap, and achieving profitability won’t be easy,” notes ‘Variety’.

‘The Batman’ may have also benefited because the comic book adaptation is playing exclusively in theatres. For Warner Bros, which opted to debut its entire 2021 theatrical film slate simultaneously on HBO Max, ‘The Batman’ marks a deviation as the studio’s first movie in more than a year that’s only available to watch in cinemas.

The film might have also been helped by the fact that it had notched up a PG-13 rating. rather than R, and therefore was able to capture the key demographic of younger males, who have been fuelling the wobbly recovery of the North American box office.

Directed by Matt Reeves, the film, with a budget of 200 million dollars, stars British actor Robert Pattinson in the dual role of Gotham City’s vigilante detective and his alter ego, reclusive billionaire Bruce Wayne, alongside Zoe Kravitz, Paul Dano, Jeffrey Wright, John Turturro, Peter Sarsgaard and Jayme Lawson.