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!
