The last few weeks have seen great headlines for The Batman and Warner Bros. Good for them, they had a solid opening. However, getting less attention has been that the movie is largely stalling as it prepares for a third weekend. Worse, it doesn’t have terribly long until it appears on streaming with no extra cost to subscribers. That means that The Batman may be heading for the Encanto phenomenon where a large portion of a potential audience is holding until they can watch the movie at home.
So why do I say that the movie is largely stalling? Well, looking at the trajectory on The-Numbers, you can see that The Batman opened strong, but then has hit near bottom or the lower quarter of trajectory projections ever since. One of my worries for The Batman has always been that the audience was severely front-loaded. I say that because the search engine queries for the film were far lower than its first weekend success might have suggested. What that can sometimes indicate is that there’s a large fanbase rabid for checking out the film — but once those fans have come and gone, the movie’s subsequent weeks are more barren. That’s becoming especially true considering the length of this film (clocking in over three hours) as well as the fact that movie theaters are often charging a premium to see the caped crusader.
With almost $500 million in total box office, the movie has almost certainly either already made it into profitability or is very close. If you consider that the overall budget for production and marketing is somewhere in the range of $300, and the theaters are averaging a 50% cut, you can see that the movie only needs a hundred million more or so to assure its profitability. The problem for Warner Bros is that just being profitable isn’t enough.
When we’re talking about the big franchises at box offices, we know that Batman is one of those properties that pulls in humongous crowds. It’s up there with James Bond, Indiana Jones, etc. Is it Spider-Man big? Not anymore, but once upon a time it certainly was. So if Warner Bros can only barely get to profitability before sputtering out, that would be a huge issue. The Batman probably needs to hit a billion or else this is a relative failure. After all, film companies need huge blockbusters on occassion to handle the write off bombs that every studio has from time to time. If The Batman can’t generate hundreds of millions in profit like Spider-Man did, then The Batman is no more important than any other film that nets a few million.
The folks over at Valliant Renegade have broken this down to really great level. It turns out that when you adjust earnings for inflation, the number of people actually going to see 2022’s The Batman is far lower than prior Batman movies. Sure, it may be generating larger revenue (not necessarily profit though), but the cultural phenomenon that spawns sequels, merchandise, video games, etc, is simply not there in comparison.
All of this is moot if The Batman can pull off a huge third weekend. The worry for Warner Bros and movie theaters must be, however, that a three-hour runtime sure can make for tired legs. Is The Batman already gassed? That’s what we’ll find out over the next few days… and with it, the future of the Batman (and DC) franchises.
Have you seen The Batman? Are you surprised it’s slowing down so quickly at the box office? Let me know in the comments below! And, as you already know, That Park Place is your place for all the news that should be fun!
Given how wrong you were on what you thought this film would do 90 million opening weekend im sure you will be wrong about this weekend. Even if this film doesnt make a billion its probably going to end between 800-1 billion. Also saying the batman has to make the same amount of profit as nwh is ridiculous because nwh i was a big crossover which would garner more hype while the batman was a reboot after the last batman film that came out in 2012. The sequel is already in early development. Also NWH is on digital and its still good at the box office. In addition comparing to encanto is dumb because its having a much better box office performance than encanto. Its amazing how wrong you always are but people take u seriously.
If you’ll recall, I said that $91 million was what a particular formula was showing, but that I thought it could come in much higher than that. Predicting the success of a somber movie in the midst of onset war in the real world was a tough variable to figure out. You need to read for comprehension rather than combativeness.
Thursday Batman domestic box off is 5 million to Uncharted at 1 million. This is huge. Perhaps you should do a more detailed historical analysis before making another prediction. It’s hard to predict how well it will do, but it already is doing much better than Shang Chi, Eternals, and Black Widow. The only exception is Spiderman with the caveat “yet”.
You realize I’m not against The Batman, right? I’m just recognizing that it is lower on its trajectory after its great first weekend, has some challenges, and needs to perform well to make Warner Bros the type of money they need to go full-steam into this iteration of the franchise.
Swing-and-a-miss again. You’re opening weekend prediction (based on formula) was $91M. Valliant went in at $110M. Actual = $134M. Move the goalposts. Valliant said, week 2 will be the test. Only a 50% drop (which is better than average). Now, it’s the third week will be critical. Only a 45% drop, which again is better-than-average. Now, it’s a “relative failure” if it doesn’t top $1B. The Dark Knight barely eclipsed $1B when there was no war, no Covid, much more demand in China for American movies, and no shortened theatrical windows.
I appreciate the more cynical look that you and Valliant take but let’s not lose objectivity here. The Batman has a 50/50 chance of knocking No Time To Die out of the 2nd highest grosser in the pandemic era: ~$775M global. That’s an unmitigated win. It’s also a profit. Not something many movies can brag about these days. That’s before getting to the 2 spin-offs in the works, the sequel, and merchandizing.