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'The Batman' scores $128 million, second-biggest pandemic debut

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Reuters

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) - Holy ticket sales, Batman!Robert Pattinson&#x27;s pitch-black superhero adventure &quot;The Batman&quot; collected a mighty $128.5 million in its box office debut, marking the best opening weekend of 2022 by a landslide. But what is more impressive: it&#x27;s only the second pandemic-era movie to cross the $100 million mark in a single weekend, a feat first achieved by &quot;Spider-Man: No Way Home,&quot; which launched last December to a historic $260 million.Thanks to positive reviews, strong reception from ticket buyers and high levels of intrigue to see Pattinson&#x27;s moody take on the Caped Crusader, &quot;The Batman&quot; is shaping up to be a commercial winner for Warner Bros. That&#x27;s good news because the studio shelled out a hefty $200 million to produce the film and spent many millions more in marking and distribution costs. Bringing Batman to the big screen doesn&#x27;t come cheap, and achieving profitability won&#x27;t be easy.&quot;The Batman&quot; also likely benefitted because the comic book adaptation is playing exclusively in theaters. For Warner Bros., which opted to debut its entire 2021 theatrical film slate simultaneously on HBO Max, &quot;The Batman&quot; marks a deviation as the studio&#x27;s first movie in over a year that&#x27;s only available to watch in cinemas. &quot;The Batman&quot; lands on HBO Max in 45 days.It&#x27;s impossible to know the box office impact of putting movies day-and-date on streaming, but &quot;The Batman&quot; has generated more money in its opening weekend than any other Warner Bros. pandemic movies grossed in their entire theatrical runs. Prior to &quot;The Batman,&quot; the studio&#x27;s highest grossing movies since March 2020 were &quot;Godzilla vs. Kong&quot; ($100 million in North America) and &quot;Dune&quot; ($109 million in North America).Of course, it helps that &quot;The Batman&quot; has the glittery promise of a former &quot;Twilight&quot; heartthrob playing one of the most famous comic book characters in history. But there were plenty of factors that could have worked against a different, less-embraced version of &quot;The Batman.&quot; For one, it clocks in at three hours, which is a long sit for even the biggest movie-lover. Not to mention, the logistics of its lengthy running time meant that theater operators had to limit the number of screenings per day.Since &quot;The Batman,&quot; directed by Matt Reeves, notched a PG-13 rating rather than R, the film was able to capture the key demographic of younger males, who have been fueling the domestic box office&#x27;s wobbly recovery.In addition to Pattinson, &quot;The Batman&quot; stars Paul Dano as the Riddler, Zoe Kravitz as Catwoman, Andy Serkis as Batman&#x27;s butler Alfred Pennyworth, and Colin Farrell as a crime lord known as Penguin. By focusing on Bruce Wayne&#x27;s alter ego as &quot;the world&#x27;s greatest detective,&quot; the movie feels more like a gritty noir than an escapist superhero adventure. Reviews seemed to be fond of that approach, since &quot;The Batman&quot; has been praised for feeling notably distinct from past adventures centered on Gotham&#x27;s ferocious defender, like director Christopher Nolan&#x27;s revered &quot;The Dark Knight&quot; trilogy or Ben Affleck&#x27;s brooding, middle-aged take on the character in &quot;Batman v. Superman.Prior to this weekend, Tom Holland&#x27;s video game adaptation &quot;Uncharted&quot; held the title for the biggest opening weekend of the year with $44 million in initial sales. &quot;The Batman,&quot; based on a far more ubiquitous property, beat that benchmark after earning $57 million on opening day alone. Yet &quot;Uncharted,&quot; which is still playing in theaters, managed to bring in solid business despite the outsized attention for &quot;The Batman.&quot; In second place, the film pocketed $10 million from 3,875 theaters between Friday and Sunday, pushing &quot;Uncharted&quot; past $100 million at the domestic box office.Channing Tatum&#x27;s canine adventure &quot;Dog&quot; landed at No. 3 with $6 million from 3,507 theaters. The road-trip buddy comedy continues to surprise, crossing $40 million in North America over the weekend. In COVID-19 times, it&#x27;s a promising result for a $15 million-budgeted film.&quot;Spider-Man: No Way Home&quot; and &quot;Death on the Nile&quot; took spots four and five on domestic box office charts.The third Spidey installment with Holland at the helm brought in $4.3 million over the weekend, boosting its domestic tally to a towering $786 million. It&#x27;s the third weekend in a row that Holland has been in two of the top four movies at the weekend box office. In an especially rare feat, &quot;No Way Home&quot; has managed to stay within the top five on domestic rankings since the film premiered in December.Disney and 20th Century&#x27;s murder mystery &quot;Death on the Nile&quot; grossed $2.6 million between Friday and Sunday. After four weekends on the big screen, the movie has earned a so-so $37 million in North America. Directed by Kenneth Branagh, who stars in the movie alongside Armie Hammer, Gal Gadot and Letitia Wright, &quot;Death on the Nile&quot; cost $90 million to produce.