‘The Batman’ Blasts Off to $120 Million-Plus Box Office Opening

Warner Bros. earns only the second $100 million-plus opening since theaters reopened and the studio’s first since September 2017

The Batman _ Catwoman & Batman
Warner Bros.

“The Batman” has proved to be exactly the box office jolt that Warner Bros. and movie theaters hoped it would be, earning $57 million from 4,417 locations on opening day as estimates project a domestic opening weekend of over $120 million.

Not only does that put “The Batman” alongside Sony’s “Spider-Man: No Way Home” as just the second film since the pandemic began to open to over $100 million, that also makes it the first Warner Bros. release in over four years to top that mark. The last title from the Burbank studio to do so was “It,” which had a $123 million opening back in September 2017, though “Joker” came close with $96 million in October 2019.

The month ahead for “The Batman” is looking very bright considering that no major tentpoles will be coming out until Sony’s “Morbius” on April 1, leaving it plenty of room to leg out. The film will have incredibly strong word-of-mouth to fuel those legs — 85% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes, 4.5/5 on Postrak and an A- on CinemaScore — along with its theatrically exclusive status after Warner Bros. spent all of last year releasing films in theaters and on HBO Max simultaneously.

With “The Batman” taking approximately 80% of all estimated box office revenue this weekend, holdover totals for all other films are small. But Sony’s “Uncharted” is holding decently in its third weekend given the competition, with an estimated $12.4 million total. That will make the Playstation adaptation the fourth Sony film to gross over $100 million in North America since this past October.

MGM/FilmNation’s “Dog” is in third with an estimated $6.5 million in its third weekend, giving the low-budget comedy a domestic total of $40 million. “Spider-Man: No Way Home” stays in the top 5 with $4.7 million in its 12th weekend, with 20th Century’s “Death on the Nile” in fifth with $2.85 million in its fourth weekend.

Comments