The Batman Now Up Against Tom Holland’s Uncharted and Halloween Ends in October 2021

Warner Bros.’ The Batman will compete against Sony’s Uncharted and Universal’s Halloween Ends following a recently announced push from June to October, 2021. Directed by Matt Reeves and starring Robert Pattinson as the Dark Knight detective, The Batman is the latest DC Comics-inspired tentpole to get a shift in release date amid the COVID-19 crisis: Warner earlier rescheduled this summer’s Wonder Woman 1984 from June 5 to August 14, announcing Monday The Flash will race into theaters one month earlier — moving from July 4, 2022, to June 3, 2022 — with the Shazam! sequel shifting from April 1, 2022, to November 4, 2022.

After a pause in production, The Batman moved from June 25 to October 1, 2021. It now opens one week before the Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg-starring Uncharted, directed by Venom filmmaker Ruben Fleischer and inspired by the PlayStation video game franchise of the same name, planned for October 8. Halloween Ends, the third and final entry in Universal and Blumhouse’s revival of the slasher franchise started with John Carpenter’s 1978 original Halloween, is set to open one week later on October 15.

October proved lucrative for Warner Bros. last year when its R-rated Joker opened to $96 million, the biggest-ever October opening. The Todd Phillips drama starring Joaquin Phoenix went on to gross over $1 billion worldwide, making it the first R-rated film to cross the milestone.

The Batman, pitting Pattinson’s costumed crime-fighter against Catwoman (Zoe Kravitz), Penguin (Colin Farrell), and the Riddler (Paul Dano), has a similar shot at success: while Batman v Superman and Justice League earned only $873 million and $657 million worldwide, respectively, Christopher Nolan’s solo Batman movies The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises are among the highest-grossing DC movies with a respective $1.04 billion and $1.08 billion each.

It remains to be seen if Uncharted performs like Sony’s other adventure franchise, the Dwayne Johnson-led Jumanji revival, consisting of Jumanji sequels Welcome to the Jungle and The Next Level. Those blockbusters scored $962 million and $796 million in 2017 and 2019, respectively.

In mid-March, industry-wide shutdowns caused by coronavirus forced Uncharted to put a pause on production for an expected six-week delay. It’s unclear if the movie will keep its date as Holland was due to film Sony and Marvel’s untitled Spider-Man 3 this summer.

Universal and Blumhouse scared up a hit with David Gordon Green’s Halloween in 2018, bringing back Jamie Lee Curtis as serial killer survivor Laurie Strode. The 40-years-later sequel to Carpenter’s original Halloween earned $255 million on a reported budget of $10 million, and will be followed by sequels Halloween Kills — set for October 16 this year — and next year’s Halloween Ends.

The Batman opens October 1, 2021, followed by Uncharted Oct. 8 and Halloween Ends Oct. 15, 2021.